


Tales from the Hound Pits

by derryday (dayari)



Series: Interregnum [1]
Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Canonical Past Minor Character Death, Class Differences, Domestic, Epidemics, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Low Chaos (Dishonored), Missing Scenes, Muteness, Nightmares, POV Child Character, PTSD, Panic Attacks, Piano, Protectiveness, fear of the dark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-25
Updated: 2015-05-16
Packaged: 2018-03-25 17:32:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 36,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3818962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dayari/pseuds/derryday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ms. Curnow was <i>nice</i>, Emily decided.</p>
<p>Not that her other teachers had not been nice, of course. The daughter of the Empress had only ever met the best scholars of the Isles.</p>
<p>But Ms. Curnow was nice in a way they hadn't quite been. She did things like this for her student: pointing her to her favorite part of the song, saving the music lesson for last, as a treat, because she knew how Emily liked it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I thought it was time to break in my other pseud. Also, I fucking love Dishonored in general, and Emily and Corvo in particular, and all of a sudden I was writing a whole lot! Here are a few notes:
> 
> This is going to be a collection of missing/extended scenes at the Hound Pits. Some of the tags won't come up until later chapters, but I thought I'd add them now. I'm stretching the timeline quite a bit because, well, you need more actual time to write missing scenes. I interpreted the Months of High Cold & Ice to be kind of November/December-ish, so it's early winter.
> 
> Also, I started working on this story before the... uhh... before the Flooded District. When I got to that point in the game I decided to just carry on. Please suspend your disbelief for the moment. xD I'm thinking about turning this into a series, because I have some snippets in mind that won't really fit into the outline of this particular story.
> 
> Lastly, the song Emily plays in this chapter (and in a few other upcoming scenes) is basically my favorite piece of piano music ever, [Anitra's Dance](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7GDt44sgag) by Edvard Grieg. It's quite a lot harder to play than it sounds, but it's _wonderful_. I love it to bits  & am so happy I found a way to include it in a fanfic.
> 
> That said, once again I'm quite nervous about posting this. But I bragged on Twitter that I was gonna do it, so I'd better follow through. I hope you enjoy the first chapter! :)

Ms. Curnow was _nice_ , Emily decided.

Not that her other teachers had not been nice, of course. The daughter of the Empress had only ever met the best scholars of the Isles.

She had been instructed in everything from algebra to music. Some of her teachers had been dusty and stuffy, like old and crinkled yellow paper. Others had gotten impatient with her, when she had sulked through the more boring lessons or doodled in the corners of her essays.

But her regular teachers had all been nice, and she had liked them. Teachers whom Emily did not like never came back to see her. Those whose company she enjoyed had stayed. In that, her mother had never shied away from expenses. She had insisted she wished Emily's mind to grow unimpeded by fear of overly strict tutors...

Her mother had...

Her _mother_...

On the keys, Emily's fingers faltered.

"My lady?" Callista said.

A fog seemed to tear open before her eyes, a dense, grayish billow between her and the waking world. Emily looked down and saw that her hands were shaking. Nothing too overt, but a fine tremor that rattled down to her wrists.

The piano keys were a bit uneven, yellowed with age. The strings were slightly out of tune. But Emily enjoyed it anyway, there in the parlor of the Hound Pits Pub, where it stood on slightly wobbly legs.

To Callista, Emily said, "I just lost my place," although it was a lie, as she knew this song quite well.

Ms. Curnow might not have known Emily for long, but she was attentive and thoughtful. Her brow furrowed a little as she studied her. Emily struggled for a smile. 

There it was again, the stumbling block that she kept catching her thoughts on, like calluses snagging on soft fabric. Her mother. The sunlit pavilion, the blood on the dusty stone floor. 

But no. Not _now_. Emily took another resolutely deep breath, though it stuck in her throat like a half-chewed honey cake. 

She was having her lessons. It was late afternoon, and she was having her last music lesson of the day, and there was no need to think of anything but the dancing, twirling notes printed on the sheet music in front of her, the gentle swish of Ms. Lydia's broom from somewhere, a low murmur of voices that drifted down from upstairs.

"Happens to the best of us," Ms. Curnow said. The pause had stretched long, but she didn't seem to mind. "Start over from here?"

Emily saw where she tapped her finger. Just a few measures before her favorite part of the song, the one where it swung up and out in a jaunty dance. Callista must have seen how she liked that part.

Yes, Emily had always liked her teachers. But Ms. Curnow was nice in a way they hadn't quite been. She did things like this for her student: pointing her to her favorite part of the song, saving the music lesson for last, as a treat, because she knew how Emily enjoyed it.

The keys felt sticky under her fingers. Emily started anew.

The song was a dance, and to Emily, it sounded like a fairytale. There was just something about it that told a story of exotic wild landscapes, winding paths through gnarled rock formations or pretty flowering gardens.

It was a pretty song, Emily thought, one that twirled and skipped across the keys like a flat stone tossed to bounce across the still surface of a lake. It required a firm but elastic touch of the keys, with the little dot that was printed above each new note. 

Though it sounded like the light-weighted twirling of a young dancer across a polished wooden theater stage, it was quite an ordeal to learn. And she was not even learning the proper version. Ms. Curnow had rewritten some sections for Emily's small hands. 

Still the song had frustrated her, and at first her attempts had sounded like the trod of heavy boots across that same theater stage. It had been something she'd had to work at.

Emily pushed the pedal down. A chord rang out loud over the rest, as the melody rose and rose, and was chased to its highest heights by her other hand, the dancer's laughter in the sun as her strong legs swung her up.

The melody was followed by its own echo. Emily let go, whipped her hand over and crossed her wrists. But the heel of her palm bumped into the keys at an angle, and her right hand produced not a light accompanying chord, but a dissonant jumble.

She huffed out a breath. Before Ms. Curnow could speak, she released the pedal. It smacked back into the wood with a clang.

From the top of the page, Emily started again. It would not do to get discouraged—she had spent far too long on this piece, was far too familiar with its pitfalls. This happened all the time: Emily would swing too wide while bringing one hand over the other, or she'd focus too much on the moment of crossing and muddle up the part leading up to it.

This time, she went slower. There went the pedal, and she felt the shift of the aged mechanics inside the piano as the strip of cloth was pulled from the strings so they could ring out freely.

There went her hand, again, crossing whipcord fast over the other. This time, the chord rang true. Her heat beat a little quicker, and there was the next chord, dissonant only until the melody joined in...

She made it flawlessly through the trickiest section, the one attached to her favorite, where her fingers had to fit neatly inside the space between some black keys. Then the song flowed back into its main motif, and the pedal felt warm under Emily's foot, the old sticky keys bopping and dancing under her fingers.

"—and do not forget to practice your scales," Ms. Curnow said to her, when she had helped Emily stack the sheet music back on top of the instrument. "I know it's tempting to just play the dance again and again, but you must remember to hone your technique."

A pause. The swish-swish of Ms. Lydia's broom sounded inordinately loud. Then Callista flicked her a slightly startled glance, and added, "My lady," an afterthought, scrambling to catch up.

Emily nodded quickly. She did not mind that Ms. Curnow called her by her birth name far too often, and almost never curtsied to her anymore. Perhaps she assumed that they were friends now, and had no need anymore for such trappings of courtesy and status.

"Well," Ms. Curnow said. She brushed a piece of lint off her trousers and stood. "I will grade your essay. Run along, if you like. You're free for the day."

She smiled, relieved, that Emily had not pouted over the honorific, or threatened to have her head chopped off or whatever it was that the simple folk thought of their regents. 

Ms. Curnow was very kind. Emily liked her neat, unadorned clothes. But she was... Well, she was a _commoner_ , was she not, and that meant it must've been quite outside her usual schedule to tutor an Empress' daughter.

Emily didn't care about the lack of curtseying, or the often-missed titles. Callista slept beside her in the tower, and her quiet breathing was a comfort, an immediate reassurance when Emily woke damp with fear-sweat under her night clothes and stared in confusion at the unfamiliar cobwebbed ceiling.

For all that she grumbled about their shared bedroom, the arrangement made Emily feel giggly and young. It reminded her of when she'd still been young enough to sleep with her governess in her bedroom. A rotund, ruddy-cheeked woman she'd been, with a lovely singing voice and a sudden, loud laugh that had always erupted boisterously and without warning.

Her mother had picked her, and they had become fast friends. Many a time had the governess helped Emily raid the kitchens for sweets, and her mother had let them, never scolding. Instead, she had swung past Emily's rooms on her way to the council chambers, decked out in her stiff finery, to steal a little apple tart for herself.

Her mother—

Her mother was dead.

Sunlight fell into the room. It painted bright stripes on the cracked and dusty tiles. Muffled through the wall came the ticking and puffing of Mr. Joplin's machines. Perhaps he was inventing something new. By the shelves stood Wallace, methodically wiping out a glass.

He wasn't looking at her. He had days when he rarely looked at anyone but Lord Pendleton. Ms. Lydia had her back turned to her, too. Still, Emily felt as though they were both perking up, like they had heard her thoughts catch like a scratched audiograph and were just a moment from turning around.

A great fist had taken hold of her lungs. It was squeezing, squeezing. A wave of heat rushed down her back, beaded up a cold sweat on the back of her neck...

The hallway was quite cool. Emily's next breath rushed in, and she coughed half of it back out, struggling to master her thudding heartbeat. But it was easier to breathe in here. Emily pressed her palms to her heated cheeks. Could these ice cold hands belong to her? They felt like somebody else's hands, stiff and shivering.

Sometimes it was right there. Sometimes it was far away, and faded to a distant roar like the crash of the tide against the shores. And then it came back.

Every time, she tried to stop herself from wondering once more if it was real. She _knew_ it was. She wasn't a small child, she didn't need to be reminded gently, again and again, like a weepy toddler.

But sometimes... It just seemed so _impossible_. Her mother was... well, her _mother_ , and the Empress besides. She would not just die. 

Jessamine Kaldwin was tall and willowy, decisive in her council rooms and gentle when she told Emily her stories at night and imitated the voices of pirates and gallant knights. She was perhaps too lenient with her daughter. But sometimes she got angry, and when she did, the little wrinkles around her eyes seemed carved of stone. 

She was the Empress and she was kind and fierce and she was Emily's _mother_. She was not supposed to just _die._

Slowly, Emily walked up the stairs. Her feet felt heavy. It seemed an age ago that she had sat at the piano with Ms. Curnow. The pub was quiet around her. The pipes clanked in the walls. The distant conversation in the second-floor hallway was still going on, a low murmur.

Corvo was not in his bedroom. The attic was faintly warm from the winter sun. The smell of the river came in more strongly up here, a briny, mildewy scent. The floor boards creaked even under Emily's small weight.

From Corvo's windows, she could not see the spires of the Tower, or even the other side of the river. She couldn't see the way the light faded slowly into dusk, and into sunset. Her mother had loved sunsets.

Corvo's bed was neatly made. A slim book lay arranged on the night stand. The walls were plastered with advertisements, glossy paper that proclaimed the pub the most entertaining bar in all of Dunwall, a yellowed print praising the Golden Cat's attractions.

Emily took a slow look around. Cobwebs dotted this room, too. They seemed to be everywhere in the pub, no matter how much dusting Cecelia and Ms. Lydia were doing. But other than the dust, the room was quite bare. If Corvo stored his weapons here, he had stashed them neatly away.

Perhaps he'd used to leave his gear lying on the table, and only shuttered it away when she'd arrived. Emily huffed quietly. Corvo was so _fussy_ about his weapons. Always watching Emily's little hands when they strayed too close, guiding her to stand on his right side, away from the pouches of ammunition, when they walked together.

He needn't have been so careful. She wasn't stupid. She knew not to touch his crossbow, a thing of wood and strange machinery that she often itched to explore, or even the sword he carried.

She sat at the desk for a while and watched the dust motes dance through the light that fell in through the dusty windows. Breathing came even easier up here. Perhaps the air was thinner. The thoughts of her mother had thickened the air downstairs, a noxious cloud of memory, and she had had to get away from it.

Emily swung her legs under the chair. She listened carefully for her heartbeat. It was still tripping and unsteady. Light streamed through the room, but it could not reach the dusty corners by the door, or the silent, cloth-draped lumps of old furniture.

In the farthest corner, the shadows seemed to move. 

That was nothing unusual. The shadows were always moving here. They shifted when she looked away, and bore entirely different shapes when she glanced back. 

Sometimes Emily wondered if the snatches of darkness were traces of all the commoners who had been evicted from the district. Perhaps they had all died of the plague by now, and now their ghosts were haunting them.

Her governess would have let out her booming raucous laugh at that. She would've ruffled Emily's hair, in a manner entirely unbefitting her station, and assured her that there were no such things as ghosts. And if there were, she'd have said, with a twinkle in her eye, the both of them just had to sing Emily's nursery rhymes loudly enough to chase them off.

By the wall, the shadows shifted. They congealed in a reddish wash of dark, gilded by the sun. Emily's feet froze under the chair, and she stared, blinking, at the aged wood paneling. Moving shadows... 

A different image rose in front of her mind's eye. The long shades cast by the stone pillars that held up a domed stone ceiling. Black-clad men dissolving into shards of darkness, blood spattering the sun-warmed tiles of the pavilion—

Emily was halfway down the stairs before she had quite realized that she was moving. She did not run, but strode quickly, her little feet making almost no sound on the steps. 

She hated, _hated_ the dark. It had been so dark—first with those horrible masked men, and then at the Golden Cat—and she had grown to resent it. Things bred in the dark. She wanted candles, she wanted light.

The room above the sewers was windy and cool. It smelled of heated metal and the steam that puffed up from the machines. Their gears chugged along in the basement, pumping up water from the Wrenhaven or whatever they did. Carefully, Emily crossed the walkway. If she looked down, she could see the machines, through the slits in the metal beneath her feet.

From the metal balcony came a clang of swords.

Her heart jumped up into her throat again. It was like it had been bobbing up and down all afternoon, crawling up in a startled frenzy and then dropping. Now, it pounded hard once more, each beat shuddering through her. 

For a moment she stood frozen. But then her feet had carried her across the room, and she was out on the balcony.

She leaned over the railing and stared out into the yard with its heaps of rusted metal and rubble washed up by the river. No soldiers from the City Watch were in sight. Instead, Corvo and the grim one, Admiral Havelock, were circling each other on the short, winter-withered grass.

For all his thick-soled boots, Corvo was light-footed and fast as always. When she'd been younger, she'd used to hate seeing him practice, because she'd thought he was truly fighting duels to the death. Then her mother had explained to her that Corvo, as Lord Protector, had to hone his skills.

Now, it was almost a nice thing to watch him. Her racing heart slowing, Emily braced her arms against the railing. The metal was cold even through her clothes. But she didn't move away. The chilly sting made her feel more real, like she was truly there and not still in the stairwell with the shadows.

Corvo ducked under Havelock's swing and kicked at his ankle, trying to unbalance the tall man. Havelock's sword came down, a brilliant arc of reflected light. It was met by Corvo's blade in a neat parry. The crash of steel on steel echoed across the yard.

For a moment, they separated. Corvo spun away, his sword held at a defensive angle. Admiral Havelock wiped the back of his hand over his brow.

Emily smiled suddenly. She fumbled her ribbon out of her hair. "Sir knight!" she called, just like in the fairytales. Her voice echoed a little in the courtyard. "You have my favor in this fight!"

On a light breeze, the ribbon fluttered down. The red cloth twirled in the wind, pulled down by the greater weight of the white bow.

Corvo shaded his hand over his eyes to look up against the pale winter sky. He caught the ribbon in his big palm. Havelock said something that Emily didn't catch. 

Corvo glanced up at where she stood. His dark hair was in disarray, his clothes rumpled, but he was the picture of gallant courtesy as he bowed to her.

Emily giggled. She ruined her own play-act of a courtly lady by waving to him, enthusiastically. Corvo tied the ribbon around a strap on the shoulder of his coat. The white bow caught the light like a little beacon.

In the end, Emily could not say whether her favor had brought him luck, or even who won. It was just a training session, after all, not a real duel. The two clashed and parted, again and again. 

Havelock fought with brute force and a deadly focus that almost looked like he anticipated Corvo's movements before he made them. But Corvo was _fast_. He was a little shorter than the admiral, leaner, but so very quick. 

In the end, they parted and shook hands. Even from this distance, Emily saw that they were both breathing hard. Her red ribbon was like a brand on Corvo's dark clothing, a splotch of color that caught the late afternoon light. 

Emily cheered and clapped, and raced to meet them, back through the machine room, the metal floor clanking under her feet.

The sun had wandered a bit once more. The stairwell was dim. The oil lamps on each landing had not yet been lit. From far downstairs came the metallic scrubbing of a brush. Someone was cleaning the kitchen sinks.

She ran down to the first floor. Her shoes pounded against the wooden floor in time with her heartbeat. Darkness congealed in the corners like mold, caught in the cobwebs under the ceiling. 

Emily raced down the steps, took them two at a time and almost fell into the tavern.

"Careful!" Cecelia admonished her, on a surprised outrush of breath, when Emily almost barreled into her.

Emily gave her a quick, blurry smile and ducked past. The door opened. And then she stood bathed in the pale winter sunlight, felt its faint warmth on her face, barely taking the edge off the chill but so very welcome nonetheless.

Her ribs loosened. Each step down the stairs had tightened invisible screws there, until she'd felt she might just shatter inward by the time she'd gotten downstairs. Now, she could breathe.

She inhaled a fresh breath of air. It smelled faintly of rot from the river. But this air had not been cooped up inside with the shadows, and with her thoughts of her mother bleeding into it like poison being re-fed. 

Ms. Curnow was leaning on the gate to the dock. Her hair looked reddish in the late afternoon sunlight. She had loosened her collar, but other than that had made no concessions to the end of her working day. If Emily's legs were a bit wobbly as she walked over to her tutor, well, Callista did not look her way. 

Emily spotted Mr. Joplin in his workshop, bent over a bench but with his head tilted oddly. His glasses reflected the light. He seemed to be pretending to work while staring at Callista. 

She knew all about engineers like him. At the Tower, she had heard whisperings of genius and madness and Sokolov. Piero Joplin was not him—at any rate, he was friendlier, and greeted her with a little nod instead of just a frightening stare from his wildly bearded face and then a too-deep bow, like Sokolov had.

"Magnificent, weren't they?" said Callista, when Emily approached her. She spoke with a little laugh just out of reach in her voice. Emily decided it made her sound even nicer, and younger. "I'm only glad they're both on our side."

Emily nodded, but had to stop herself from rolling her eyes. The thought of Corvo being on any _other_ side was just ludicrous.

The wind from the river caught her hair and blew the short tangles across her face. Emily sighed and pushed the strands off her forehead. The ribbon had held it back. But it had also helped Corvo in his fight, and so she would not complain about its loss.

The duelists came down the stairs. They both looked sweaty and rumpled. For a brief moment, Emily had a chilling thought of the wintry cold and whether it might be settling in their chests, and tomorrow they would be coughing and the day after that there might be blood...

The moment passed, nothing but a brief, fast-paced cloud. "Well fought, good sirs!" Emily greeted them, at the same time that Callista enthused, "That was _amazing!_ "

The admiral glanced between them with a wry look. It was perhaps odd that Ms. Curnow was the one who beamed at them, and Emily who stood straight and affected the air of an elegant grown-up lady at court.

"Gotta keep in shape," Havelock said gruffly. He quirked a smile at Callista that looked odd on his weather-beaten face. He did not smile very often. "And Corvo here is a real challenge." To Corvo, he said, "Care for a drink?"

Corvo nodded. He wiped his tangled hair out of his face, in much the same way as Emily had just done. The thought made her smile. He didn't look very tired, despite the rigorous sparring match he'd just been in. His footsteps were easy and measured as always, his sword neatly tucked away.

"That must've come in handy against the pirates," Ms. Curnow said to Havelock. 

She fell in step beside him, with a look of shy admiration Emily didn't think she'd ever seen before. She looked a bit like Emily thought she would herself, if she ever saw a real-life whale, or a real pirate like the ones from her stories.

The admiral scoffed. Together, they all walked over to the pub. "It's been a long time since I've been on a ship," he said, after a pause. He did not seem to know what to do with Callista's wide-eyed look.

The long shadow of the house fell across Emily's shoulders. She heard a swish of moving fabric. When she looked up, Corvo was untying her ribbon from his coat. He must've seen her fidget with her hair.

"Oh!" Emily said, dismayed, as Corvo held out the ribbon. "But, no, I gave it to you..."

Mr. Joplin walked past her through the door. His eyes behind his grease-smeared glasses were fixed on Ms. Curnow's back.

Then the door swung half-shut behind him, and Emily was alone with Corvo. Ms. Curnow's voice faded and muffled beyond the wall. They were getting that drink. Wallace was probably rousing from his thoughts, leveling a haughty stare at them, glasses clinking as he set out the whiskey on the bar.

Corvo was still holding the ribbon. Emily swallowed. Her thoughts whirred fast. In the end, she dropped her courtly lady act. She sighed as though it were a great imposition, and said, "Well, alright." 

She held her hair up and out of the way. Corvo knelt by her side, his boots crunching on the gravel and frozen grass, to tie the ribbon back into place.

His fingers were big and clumsy, not like the slim, fast hands of her handmaidens. He was too wary of catching strands of her hair in the knot he made. The red headband slipped down her hair. Then he had to tug to get the white ribbon into its usual place just beside her part.

It was quite cold in the shade cast by the house. Emily shivered a little. "Corvo," she whispered.

She spoke very quietly, so none beyond the door would overhear. But Corvo caught her hesitant query. He always did. 

He leaned down further to hear her. Emily stared at his knee where he knelt in the dirt, It seemed easier than looking up at his face. 

Corvo would not lie to her. She knew that like she knew the sun rose in the east. He would not lie. She could ask, and he would answer.

He would know if the assassins could get them here. If they would one day congeal out of the shadows like they had at the gazebo. And he would tell her if he had ever seen the darkness move in the stairwell, or if it was just her childish imagination, driven into a fright by her ordeal.

She meant to ask. Truly, she did. But somehow, what came out instead was, "Is my mother really dead?"

She looked up, then, to catch his answer. She saw it in the firming of his mouth, the little lines around his eyes, before he nodded.

The furrow of concern on his brow did not go away. He knew that hadn't quite been what she'd meant to say. Sometimes Emily mused that because he did not speak, Corvo had honed his hearing over the years, and could now listen to even the faintest threads of thought.

"It just seems so— unreal," Emily blurted out.

She felt heat rise to her face. It was like another veil had torn, another fog of strange fancies in her head. 

What was she doing, intercepting him on his way to a well-earned drink with their loyalists? Oh, she knew Corvo didn't mind. He never had, and he likely never would. Emily could not fathom any circumstances under which he would ever turn her away. But— 

She glanced back at the door. Mr. Joplin had only just walked through. What if he had heard her silly question?

"When I was at the Golden Cat," Emily said quickly, "well, I spent so much time there, months really, and it just didn't seem real sometimes, and now I'm _here_ and..."

Corvo studied her. She fought not to squirm under his scrutiny. Then he reached out and very gently pinched the soft, pale skin on her wrist.

Emily snorted. If her laugh sounded more choked than it had any right to, Corvo didn't mention it. "All right," she said. Her voice shook, but only a little. When she breathed, it went in easier, some of the tension melting away. "I'm awake."

Corvo nodded. He rose, and offered her his hand. 

His hand, so very familiar to her, from the neatly trimmed nails to the sword calluses in his palm. Maybe she took it too fast to seem entirely casual. But his fingers closed around hers with their usual unhurried familiarity, so perhaps Corvo had not noticed anything.

Together, they walked through the door, into the dusty air of the pub. With Corvo's bulk as a reassuring presence next to her, Emily did not glance into the stairwell.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "My lady, please focus."
> 
> Ms. Curnow sounded tired. Emily felt a little bad for her. But the twinge of guilt was quickly drowned out by her excitement. 
> 
> She swung the fork in a triumphant circle. "But I'm on a whale ship!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm having _so much fun_ with this fic, I just couldn't wait any longer to update. Many, many thanks to every single person who left kudos--you are all wonderful! I hope you enjoy this chapter (even though it's kind of just... angst, angst, and more angst. Oops). :D
> 
> Also, since I forgot last time, [here is my Tumblr](http://derryday.tumblr.com/) if anyone wants to say hi or chat about Dishonored. And by chat I mean cry.

"My lady, please focus."

Ms. Curnow sounded tired. Emily felt a little bad for her. But the twinge of guilt was quickly drowned out by her excitement. 

She swung the fork in a triumphant circle. "But I'm on a whale ship!"

The fork descended upon the rusty candlestick that Cecelia had put on the table for them. Emily swept the tines through the small, flickering flame. 

"Oh, it _hurts!_ " she cried. "The whale has bitten me! Hold on, princess—," by which she meant the salt shaker that stood just behind the candle, "—we will save you from the beast!"

She puffed up her cheeks and made a noise like she imagined firing cannons. The candle flame flickered. 

The fork rounded it in an elaborate sweep. Emily imagined majestic sails billowing into the wind, catching the storm that surely raged out on the seas where whales went.

"That's not a whale ship, that is a fork," said Ms. Curnow with strained patience. "My lady..."

Emily blew out the candle, then raised both hands in victory. Her knees bumped into the table, and the cutlery and plates rattled. 

"We've slain the whale!" she said loudly. "We'll feast on his flesh and survive off his oil for months!"

Ms. Curnow brought her hand down on the table. Not hard, just a dry slapping sound, but it was enough to stop Emily in her tracks. "Emily, that's enough," she said sharply. "You've played enough. We have to finish your lesson."

Emily scowled. She dropped her fork and swung her feet under the table. "But dining etiquette is bor-ring," she said, punctuating the words with two thumps of her swinging feet against the the bench.

"I know you'd rather be playing," Ms. Curnow said, "as would any child your age. But Emily, you are going to be Empress. You have to—"

"I don't _have_ to do anything," Emily pointed out. "If I'm gonna be Empress, _I_ decide what I'll do, right? Well, I'm going to eat cake and wear my nightgown in public and draw all day..."

" _Emily_ ," Ms. Curnow snapped. "This is important. Think of the parliament, the councils. How will anyone listen to you if you reenact fairytales at your state dinners?"

Emily shrugged. She banged her feet into the bench again. "They listen to Mother."

Then a chill descended upon her. She hadn't meant to say that. 

Callista blinked. Emily watched with numb helplessness as her frown smoothed and softened.

That was not... She had no idea where the words had come from, where they'd been unearthed. A small, idyllic place at the very back of her childish mind, perhaps, where the truth had not yet permeated.

She had not meant to say that.

Her mother was gone. Emily _knew_ she was. That day in the pavilion hadn't shaken her so much that she had forgotten. 

But sometimes it crept up on her, like the Hound Pits' long, frightening shadows, looming in the corner of her vision until it was suddenly right there. And each time it was as though someone had taken the very fabric of reality and shaken it vigorously, as one might shake out an old blanket.

"Emily," Callista began, hesitantly, then broke off.

She sounded softer now. A sudden, unreasonable swell of anger rose in Emily's throat, hot and choking. 

She wanted to shout at Callista, though for what she didn't quite know. She wanted to sweep her arm across the table. The plates and cutlery would clatter to the floor, and then she would run up and across the metal walkway to her bedroom and slam the door, except— 

Except she'd have to go up the stairs, through those dreadful hallways where darkness lurked in the corners and expanded when Emily drew near, like a living, breathing thing that scented prey.

Emily shook herself. That would not do. And she would not let Ms. Curnow _comfort_ her like a scared little girl. 

Like a toe stubbed painfully in a dark room, she had tripped up on that day in the pavilion again. But she was the heiress to an Empire. She would hide her stumbles. She was sitting through a lesson and she would remain seated until the hour was up. 

Emily gave Ms. Curnow her best eager look. "So, forks," she said, louder than she should have. "Could you explain them again?"

Callista paused for a long moment. Her keen eyes searched Emily's face and the shaky, plastered-on smile. She didn't look impatient anymore. But it wasn't what Emily had wanted; she would have preferred another scolding for her short attention span.

"Alright," Ms. Curnow said at last, on a sigh. She pointed at the full place setting laid out in front of Emily. "Let's start from the outside again. This one is the salad course..."

Emily listened and nodded periodically. She knew all of this. She'd been instructed in dining etiquette ever since she'd been old enough to hold forks and spoons. The only thing she could never remember was which spoon was the soup spoon and which the tea spoon—they were different sizes, but somehow looked the same to her.

But at least Ms. Curnow was talking, and not giving her that pained, concerned look anymore. 

That look had burrowed into her ever since the day Callista had first launched it at her, unsuspecting of the dizzying vortex of despair it opened up in her student. She probably just wanted to be kind. But Emily needed her to get on with the lessons, scold her for playing, give her something to focus on. 

The forks were all the same size. The Hound Pits Pub did not have the full set of fine silverware that was to be expected at Emily's state dinners. Emily just had to imagine the slightly longer tines, the thicker handles.

"The fish course?" she said, when Callista pointed at one of the forks, deliberately getting it wrong.

Ms. Curnow smiled a little. "Not quite," she said, encouraging. "Try again."

* * *

By the time evening rolled around and Corvo came back, Emily was still in the tavern. Though for the time being, she was alone.

Her foot scraped slowly across the cracked tiles of the floor where she dragged it back and forth under the piano stool. This time, the memory of her mother was less like a cloud and more syrupy, like glue that kept her inert in the large room.

Something was stuck high up in her chest. Between her collarbones, just beneath where her throat bobbed whenever she swallowed. It felt hard and unwieldy, hot and chilly by turns.

Perhaps she would cough, and she wouldn't be able to stop. Perhaps she had finally caught the rat plague. Even at the Golden Cat it had burrowed in. She didn't think she had escaped it just by coming to the Hound Pits.

Eventually, she would fall ill, from some foul wind from the river, or even from the dusty cobwebs that hung from the ceiling in the bedroom she shared with Ms. Curnow.

Emily stared at her hands, loosely folded as they were in her lap. Her palms bore the soft pale skin of a high-born girl. Even Ms. Curnow had mild calluses on her fingers from holding pens.

These hands could draw, write, make music, and play. Could they gesture confidently, underlining and strengthening her points as she presented a new idea in the council chambers? Could they cut off an arrogant lord in parliament if need be?

The fact that she would one day be Empress had always been a part of her life. A touchstone, the unacknowledged background of a grand painting. 

But she had never really thought about it. She'd never had a reason to. She was only ten, and she had so much left to learn, and her mother had been in the prime of her life...

So Emily had imagined that, once she was Empress, she would do nothing but eat cake all day. She would have wardrobes filled with the prettiest dresses, tailors from all the Isles. She would travel on a whale ship, because no one could tell their regent that girls did not do that. She would see whales and the sea and the endless sky.

And then her mother had died. And now Emily was... she was going to be Empress.

Oh, she would would not be alone. She would have advisers, to be sure. Corvo would be there, and maybe Callista too, and endless streams of servants and handmaidens and tutors.

But she would still have a coronation. A proper one, with all the pomp and circumstance that befitted her station. The city's depleted stocks and pantries would be plundered for the most elaborate feast they could afford.

The thing in her chest bobbed a little, like bile rising. Emily held her breath, but the moment passed and there was no cough forthcoming. 

She pressed a shaking hand to her chest. She should've felt her ribs bulging, bursting from the inside with the strain of containing the writhing thing there. But she felt nothing, no movement. Her breastbone was hot through her shirt. Hot with fever, perhaps?

There would be no seafaring. These hands would have to stop playing. Maybe they'd even stop drawing, for surely the everyday life of an Empress—which her mother had made look easy, if burdensome—was so grim that there would be no time for pictures of rainbows and cats. These hands would get calluses from putting her signature under treatises and laws.

She would have to sit in the council chambers with wrinkled old men and their cigars and their booming voices. She would have to breathe the same air as those who were, right now, perhaps in parliament with that blasted traitor who called himself Lord Regent. She'd sit there, knowing they had once bowed and scraped to Hiram Burrows. She would have to pretend to consider their pedantic opinions.

Would they listen to her? Maybe not. Emily was only ten, after all. And there were some who had not agreed with what her mother had been doing.

Perhaps there were more people who thought like that nasty old Spymaster had, and who would simply burn the contaminated districts to the ground. Root out the poor and the sick, like weeds growing in a treasured garden, and rebuild Dunwall on their spilled blood.

Emily didn't want that. She didn't like the plague. Plague victims were _gross_ and she never wanted to think about them for too long. But that was what they were, victims, and it would make her feel so bad if they were punished for getting sick, something they could not have helped.

Maybe she could convince Mr. Joplin to create so much of his special blue tonic that they could give it to everyone, even the few survivors who might be hiding out in the Flooded District. He would have to obey her, wouldn't he? She would be Empress.

Emily stroked a finger down the keys, slowly enough that it made no sound. From the river came a sliver of sunlight. It glowed orange on the piano, and gilded even the scratched tile floor. 

Her mother had loved sunsets. For months she had stood and observed each one, staring out at the river as the seasons changed as though willing Corvo's ship to return faster. 

Her mother, and her steely conviction that the sick and dying were not rats to be disposed of. Her mother's straight-backed refusal to even listen to her Spymaster every time he brought up the issue of deportation. Her _mother..._

The thing in her chest shivered, a heated, rattling tremor that she recognized, now. She wasn't about to cough or be ill. The brittle feeling was one that preceded a tidal, uncontrollable rush of tears. 

Emily bit her lip until it hurt. She wasn't a baby. She would not cry. Not here, not where someone might see.

She flinched when the door opened. A rush of cold air swept through the room. But it was just Corvo. He had come back. He shut the door quickly, and the painted glass threw an odd light on his face.

For a moment Emily had a strange sense of déjà vu. But he wasn't wearing his mask, and she wasn't curled up on the floor of her small room at the Golden Cat, confused and frustrated and afraid.

She ducked her head, wiped at her eyes under the pretense of tucking her hair back. She sniffed away the snot that had congealed in her nose, and looked at the backs of her hands. No blood. A little bit of dampness from the unshed tears she'd just brushed out of her eyes, but no blood.

When she finally looked at him, she had a smile ready. "Hey, Corvo," she said. 

With his customary grave respect, Corvo inclined his head to her. His boots made soft, almost inaudible noises on the tile as he came over to her. She had never figured out how he could keep such silence in his steps although he was so tall.

She could see faint imprints around his eyes where the glasses of his scary mask had dug in. A little line of concern joined them, right between his brows. Corvo studied her, and how he could even see her face properly in the dim light, she did not know.

"Did your trip go well?" Emily said. Or tried to, at least, because her voice cracked wetly, an unexpected betrayal.

She exhaled around the rattling pressure, a valve close to bursting. She knew what she had to do. She'd hold very still now so the dam wouldn't break. And she would not think of her mother's face, rosy in the light of a setting sun, or of dusty council chambers and stony-faced old men.

Corvo paused. He surveyed the room with a quick, sharp glance, as if in search of whatever it was that had upset her.

"I keep forgetting the forks," Emily said, shakily. She gestured to the table where Ms. Curnow had taught her about dining etiquette. It was a poor excuse at best. "I'm fine, just tired."

Corvo looked at her silently, at the wet sheen of her eyes, her trembling lips. She felt her hands, her useless little-girl hands, clench in her lap. She wanted to squirm, start asking loudly about what Corvo had been doing, do anything to escape his scrutiny.

In the end, he didn't question her further, not even with a raised eyebrow. He went over to the stove to warm up his hands.

Through blurry eyes, Emily stared at Corvo's hands. There was something black and inky on the back of the left. Emily couldn't see properly, but she grimaced faintly anyway. She really hoped it wasn't blood.

The swelling in her lungs turned over, like a lazy engine slogging through its first few pulses. She held on to her hands. Her throat hurt now, a hot coal lodged just above where the tears sat. 

She had the strange, foreboding feeling of a wave building and building, and when it broke, it would wash her away. 

She couldn't cry now. Not when it was supposed to be just a normal day at the Hound Pits, with lessons and chatter from upstairs and Corvo returned safely from a mission and peaceful sunlight coming in through the dirty windows.

And she was not a toddler to be soothed, no matter how often the ladies at the Golden Cat had plied her with honey cakes and fairytales to keep her entertained. 

She would not cough, and she would not cry. She _would not_. There was no telling where they'd put her if she didn't. And more than anything, Emily didn't want to be cast aside again. 

Who knew where the admiral would sequester her off to, if he thought her a whiny child? This was a strange and sometimes boring place, cluttered and dusty and filled with all those shadows. But she wanted to stay. Corvo was here, and Callista—Ms. Curnow—was here too, and things were _happening_. She did not want to be locked away in some back room again, not even for her own good.

Something appeared in her wavering vision. A bright square of fabric. She looked up. Corvo was holding out a handkerchief to her, perhaps a little hesitantly, like he was not sure how well the gesture would be received.

She thought, vaguely, that he really, really looked like he wanted to speak.

Emily sniffed again. "Keep it," she said, harsher than she'd intended. "I'm not crying. I'm _not_."

Of course, Corvo said nothing. Somehow he managed to radiate skepticism. But he put the handkerchief away. 

Footsteps came down the stairs. Emily flinched a little. Her ribs felt like brittle wood. Each breath heaved the aching, unwieldy thing in her chest up against them. She squeezed her hands together and hid them in her lap, an odd, shamed reflex.

Callista appeared in the corridor. She stopped in the doorway when she spotted them. For a moment there was silence, only broken by the electrical hum of the yellowish lamps by the stairwell.

She looked over at Corvo, and Corvo looked back, and they seemed to hold a brief, voiceless conversation over Emily's head. 

"You play very well, my lady," Callista said at last, even though Emily hadn't even been playing.

Callista leaned over her shoulder. She eyed the sheet music speculatively, then sent a tentative smile down to her student. "Would you like to learn another song?"

Emily gave Ms. Curnow a suspicious look. A strange stab of jealousy had hit her, and hadn't yet faded. Ms. Curnow had not known Corvo for long. She had no business understanding the silent language of his eyes.

But Callista leaned conspiratorially closer. "A commoners' song?"

The little flash of sulking hurt vanished. Emily gaped at her. A... a _commoners'_ song? 

Commoners had songs, she knew that. She had heard their faint tunes often enough, drifting up to the Tower from the streets during the Fugue Feasts, and other times too, until the plague had come and silenced the city's merry chatter in the streets.

"Yes!" Emily blurted out. Perhaps it was too loud and shaky, but Ms. Curnow didn't seem to mind.

A commoners' song. A distraction. She would put her little hands on the keys, and she would play. And perhaps the congested, solid feeling in her lungs would go away if she played for long enough, and she wouldn't have to cough or weep. 

Ms. Curnow tugged a rickety chair closer with her foot and sat. Emily rubbed her hands quickly to warm them. 

She wondered, for a stomach-turning moment, if Callista saw how soft they were, how pale and pampered. But if she did, she didn't say anything. She just leaned over Emily to the dusty books of music on top of the piano.

Emily ducked her head, then glanced carefully at Corvo. He had moved to lean against the wall, close to the stove to soak up its heat. He met her eyes without hesitation, and Emily gave him a brief, bashful smile. She hadn't meant to be snappish with him earlier.

Ms. Curnow rummaged through the sheet music. Emily craned her neck to watch. Her old music teacher had never allowed her to play anything but the finest minuets and sonatas from renowned composers famous all over the Isles. 

Emily breathed out. Slowly, but this time it was easier. Her chest still felt too tight. But it had turned into a fading, crawling sensation, like a stirred ant hill that would settle down again once it had gotten over its shock.

"Alright," Callista said, as she pulled out a tattered volume of blotchy printed music. "How about a song of the sea?"

* * *

She was still humming the song, "What shall we do with the drunken whaler...," later when she sat by the river.

It had been winter earlier. Emily remembered that. But somehow, the air was unseasonably warm. The sky was a powdery blue, lined with rosy gold where the setting sun lit up the clouds. The sun itself had already sunk beyond the bulky, imposing shape of Coldridge Prison on the other side of the river.

"Feed him to the hungry rats for dinner," Emily sang, absently, more a half-whisper than a real melody. "Early in the morning..."

The water was cool around her hand, but not as cold as it should've been. There was no frost on the reeds. Emily swished her fingers back and forth, watched the way the little ripples on the water distorted the reflection of her face. 

Normally she wouldn't have been touching the water. The _sewers_ ran into the Wrenhaven. But somehow, tonight, that did not seem important. The water looked clear, and it didn't smell of rust and rotting wood the way it normally did.

Mist was rising from the water, a fine spray that hung like a cloud at the riverside. Coldridge Prison was a faded slab of darkness against the brilliant colors of the sunset. 

Emily found she was glad she couldn't see it properly. It was there that Corvo had almost died.

"Shoot him through the heart with a loaded pistol," she murmured. Her hand made little waving motions. She watched the ripples that fanned out, a little bit of sand being stirred up from the riverbed. The water was so very clear tonight. "Shoot him through the—"

When Emily looked at her own reflection in the water, there was a man standing behind her.

She almost fell into the river. Only a hasty grab for the sun-warmed stone slab she sat on saved her.

Her heart pounding, Emily scrambled to her feet. She stared up at the man in shock, quite rudely, she knew, but she couldn't help it. Where had he _come_ from? She hadn't heard the crunch of gravel that his boots must've made down the steps to the riverside.

The man looked her up and down, assessing. His iris-less eyes, Emily saw, were completely black.

When he quirked a smile at her, it was probably meant to be reassuring. Instead, it made the fine hairs on her forearms prickle as they rose into goosebumps. 

In a smooth, low voice, he said, "So you are Emily Kaldwin."

"That's your highness to you," said Emily, automatically.

He didn't seem to be listening. He just looked at her out of his strange eyes. He had his arms folded, head cocked like Mr. Joplin when he was regarding a strange cog in one of his devices. 

He took a slow, shuffling walk around her, examining her from every angle. Emily turned with him. After a moment, she took a careful step towards the stairs. She didn't want to have him at her back. 

Up the stone steps and across the sandy yard, the windows of the pub reflected the brilliantly-colored sunset. Nobody was rushing down the stairs. None but her seemed to have noticed the man.

"You're not that interesting yet," he mused. He spoke so quietly. Emily could hardly hear him over the startled staccato of her pulse. "But then, you are young. And with someone as fascinating as Corvo by your side, you may yet grow into a lady worth observing."

The name broke the strange spell. Emily flinched back from him. With a leap she was on the bottom step, bracing her hand against the dusty concrete wall. The pub was just behind her, she thought, it was right there, it would be a matter of seconds to run up the stairs and yell for help.

"Corvo? How do you know him?" Emily's voice shook. She tried on her best glare to make up for it. "And you should call him Lord Protector!"

The man smiled. He hadn't moved, not even to follow her. But now he suddenly stood closer, his boots bumping into the stone foundation of the stairs.

The concrete was dusty beneath her feet, littered with gravel. She almost stumbled as she clambered up a few steps, awkwardly, with her back still to the pub. Fear choked her like a lump of tears in her throat.

"So concerned with the trappings of your station, little Empress." The stranger was still calm, unexcited. He did not even seem to notice her fright. "Be careful that you do not get tangled in these webs."

"I'm not little," Emily whispered. She took a few more shaky steps up the stairs. Her heels kept catching on the sandy stone. "Why are your eyes black? Where's Corvo?"

"Sleeping," the man said. The wind from the river didn't seem to touch him. His dark hair remained unmoved, even as Emily felt the sharp breeze catch the lace on her collar. "As are you. I simply wanted to take a look at you."

Emily drew herself up to her full height. With the aid of the stairs, she was as tall as him. This time she cleared her throat before she spoke, and was relieved when her voice remained steady.

"Well, you can take your creepy eyes and look somewhere else with them." She gave him her best haughty stare, the same one that her mother had sometimes leveled at white-haired, pot-bellied councilmen. "I don't like you."

There was a short silence. The man looked surprised, or as surprised as he ever got. At any rate, she had made a move he had not quite expected.

A sharp wind blew south, stirring her hair out of her face. The light was fading, an indigo shade drawing itself up across the sky towards the prison. The last rays of the sun cast strange shadows across the riverside.

"Mildly rude," the man said, pensively. An observation, like she was an exotic animal that had just done something entertaining. "It is to be expected, of course, in this situation."

" _You_ are rude," Emily snapped. "Sneaking up on a future Empress, and, and _staring_ at me."

A small smile tugged at the corners of the stranger's mouth. He didn't seem particularly apologetic, or even bristling at being told off by a ten-year-old. He looked _amused_ , and not at all intimidated by her, and a crawling, urgent feeling settled into the back of her neck.

"I want you to leave."

As soon as the words were out, she winced. She sounded like a whining child, not a high-born lady commanding a lowly commoner. 

But she couldn't have helped the shake in the words. She felt wobbly and unsettled, like she had missed a step on another set of stairs and her stomach had not yet dropped back down to its usual snug place below her ribs. 

She was afraid, she realized. Afraid of this man and his strange appearance and his eyes, and it was... irritating.

The man's smile widened, a fierce, dangerous thing. His black eyes glittered. They caught the fading golden light, like embers drifting up into the sooty darkness of a chimney. 

"I have not been sneaking, my lady," he said, with a courteous little bow. And oh, she thought, bristling, _now_ the tramp remembered his manners—

And then he was right in front of her. 

There'd been no footsteps to herald his movement. One moment he was down by the river looking up, and the next he stood so close that she felt his breath on her face.

"You see, I am everywhere," he whispered. He smelled of burned things and the sea breeze, and his eyes were fathomless, gleaming. "You're just not one of those who choose to look."

Emily jerked back. The stairs were worn down from hundreds of patrons, back before the plague had taken the Hound Pits. Her heel bumped into the next stone step.

It was the fall that woke her.

She jolted upright so fast that the bedsprings creaked in protest. Someone was calling her name. Emily's limbs were caught in something soft yet unyielding. She gasped for breath, and it was dark, so _dark_ , she could only see diffuse powdery flashes of dim color in her vision, the kind that came after sleep and in the inky black of a nocturnal bedroom.

"— _Emily!_ " Callista called, again. "Emily, it's alright. You're safe, it was just a dream!"

Finally, Emily yanked herself loose from the blankets. The darkness seemed to congeal and thicken around her, a terrible, grasping presence swelling in the room.

"It's dark!" Emily gasped. Her eyes filled with helpless, frightened tears. "It's so _dark_ —"

She tried to scramble off the bed. There was a soft thump as she collided head-first with Callista's bony shoulder. Callista's slim hands caught the soft sleeves of the dressing gown Cecelia had hemmed shorter for her to wear at night. 

Then Callista's palm closed around her arm, and there was a clatter of metal, and suddenly, one of the oil lamps lit up.

Emily's chest hurt. She was breathing in and in, and yet her head spun. The light dissolved in her vision, until it formed a big, billowing blur of gold. 

Callista gathered her close. At any other time Emily might have balked, or tried to hide her tears in her sleep-tousled hair. Now, though, she could still see the man's black eyes, shining like polished marbles. She lunged into Callista's embrace, and sniffled into her shoulder.

Callista held her tightly with one arm. The other seemed to be moving. She rummaged around on Emily's nightstand. 

They weren't supposed to have the lights on at night. The admiral had said so, and Cecelia always went from room to room at nightfall to extinguish the lamps that were still lit. 

But the light brightened again. Callista had lit another lamp. Emily could see the desk on the other side of the room now, the worn hardwood floor, the stars in the nocturnal sky.

Stars, like the ember-lights that had flown into the stranger's eyes. Like an abyss, swallowing up everything that touched it. She shuddered.

Then both of Callista's arms were around her. Callista rocked her lightly, murmuring words of comfort into her hair. She was thinner than Emily's mother, bonier, but so warm, and her night dress was soft under Emily's damp cheek.

Dug by the nightmare as it had been, the well of Emily's tears dried up quickly. She wiped her cheek against Callista's gown. She blinked blearily at the fabric. Only damp, not garish red. She was safe yet, though she had lost control and wept.

Relieved, Emily clung a little, trembling still. Just this once, it hadn't been so bad. The wave had not swept her away. Callista didn't seem to mind that she had to comfort her future Empress. She held her tightly, one hand a soothing weight between her shoulders. 

And if Emily was very lucky tonight, perhaps Callista wouldn't tell. All children had bad dreams. Surely her tutor know that, and would see that there was no reason for the admiral to be informed.

At last, Callista spoke. Her voice reverberated through both of them. "Do you want to tell me what you dreamed?"

Emily sniffled again. Her face felt disgusting. She had not cried for long, and yet it felt as though she had, like some of the heavy, heavy weight of all her unshed tears had flown out.

"I dreamed of a m-man," she said haltingly. "He was rude and spoke in riddles, and, and his _eyes_..."

Callista stroked her palm down Emily's back. "Shh," she murmured. Her breath stirred the short hairs at Emily's nape. "You are safe here. There is only one way into this tower, and Corvo guards it. He would never let anyone through."

 _Corvo._ The thought of him struck like a bell being rung. Emily jerked slightly in Callista's arms, and drew back a bit, until she could see her worried face.

"The man said he _knew_ him," Emily blurted out. 

A fine tremor rattled through her hands where they clutched Callista's nightgown. She had begun shaking anew. That unsettling, idle _interest_ in the black eyes, the appreciation with which he'd said Corvo's name...

"Corvo?" Callista said, nonplussed.

Emily nodded quickly. Her nightgown stuck to her back, clammy with sweat. She was beginning to shiver in the cool air, but she did not care, there was no time... 

"He said he'd _done_ something to him," she whispered. She swung her legs out of bed. She had to hurry.

Callista watched, bemused, as Emily hurriedly dashed the tears from her cheeks. "To Corvo?"

Callista... Callista had been awake before her. She had traversed the room to Emily's bed, she'd been at the window. Perhaps she had heard something, seen something. 

Emily whirled around. "Is he alright?" she asked quickly. "Is Corvo alright? Did you see anything in the attic?"

"I did not," Callista said. She rose from the bed, too. For the first time Emily noticed, with a strange disconnected wonder, that her hair was undone. The soft brown strands around her face made her look young again.

Callista glanced out of the window, at the metal walkway that connected their tower to the pub. "Do you want to go check on him?"

Emily gasped quietly. She had not thought of that. How _obvious_ —of course she could just go and look. With Callista by her side, she would be able to walk over to the attic, even with the wintry wind nipping at her heels in the darkness.

At her relieved smile, Callista held up a quelling hand. "We might wake him," she cautioned.

"He won't mind," Emily insisted. "And if the stranger is there we can protect him!"

Callista did not ask Emily what she thought she could do to an adversary who managed to sneak up on the Lord Protector in his sleep. She gently herded her into her slippers and Callista's own woolen coat, which dragged on the floor, collecting a bit of dust from the hardwood.

Outside, it was quite chilly, a cold, clear night. Emily's breath condensed into a cloud of mist in front of her face. Callista shivered beside her. She'd wrapped a shawl around her lovely hair.

The metal walkway crackled with frost under their feet. The Hound Pits were almost completely dark. Engulfed by shadows. Emily shivered. She could not even see the brickwork where the house's own silhouette cast it into pitch black.

No light shone out of the windows of the servants' quarters. But Emily could see a faint, flickering glow come through the painted glass of the front door. Perhaps Lord Pendleton was having a night cap.

The attic was cold, too, though warmth that emanated from below Corvo's door. There was a faint ruddy glow beneath, from the stove inside. Ms. Lydia must've tended to the fire right before Corvo had gone to bed.

The door creaked loudly as Callista pushed it open. Emily winced. The hinges groaned out each and every one of their unoiled years.

Corvo was lying on his stomach, his face turned away from the door. His hair had grown in prison. It was an inky black splotch on his pillow, the whiteness of his shirt almost blending into the sheets. 

Her heart beating high in her chest, Emily glanced around. She only saw more darkness, and pale moonlight seeping in through the dusty windows. The familiar wooden beams that held up the ceiling, the cloth-covered furniture...

The man wasn't anywhere. Even the corners of the room were empty. The flames crackled merrily behind the iron door. They sent flickering licks of golden light across the dusty floor.

Corvo had not woken at the sound of the door. Emily looked at the slow rise and fall of his shoulders under the sheet. Perhaps his last errand had been a hard one, sending him so deeply into sleep that even that infernal creaking had not roused him.

Or maybe he had recognized them somehow, Emily thought. He might've woken, very slightly, at the first creak of rusty metal, and recognized who was coming to see him, and fallen back asleep at the absence of a threat.

Callista met Emily's gaze, expectant. Waiting to see if Emily was satisfied, seeing Corvo alive and well and getting his well-deserved rest. Emily took a deep breath, inhaling the woodsmoke smell from the hearth, and nodded at her.

They tiptoed back out. The chill in the hallway was almost a physical thing, like tiny teeth snapping at her bare ankles in her slippers. Emily threw one last look back at Corvo, and closed the door on the light.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emily woke to the sound of gunfire.
> 
> She burrowed tighter into her nest of blankets. The room was chilly and smelled faintly of woodsmoke from the stove. The embers had to be going out by now, gleaming faintly behind the door.

Emily woke to the sound of gunfire.

She burrowed tighter into her nest of blankets. The room was chilly and smelled faintly of woodsmoke from the stove. The embers had to be going out by now, gleaming faintly behind the door.

At the Hound Pits Pub, there were no discreet chambermaids constantly flitting in and out of Emily's room, checking whether the fire needed more wood, or whether the curtains were properly shut.

Another gunshot echoed across the yard. Emily groaned and turned her face into her pillow. Through the lumpy feathers, the bone-thing she'd found by the river poked her in the forehead.

She had not slept too well. Odd dreams had pursued her. She'd woken in between to Ms. Curnow's quiet breathing. The dreams had been disconnected, following one after the other like pages in a story book.

Shadows melting out of corners, congealing into assassins. The scarred face of the man in the pavilion, blurred by memory, and yet still hovering behind her eyelids when she closed them... 

One time she'd dreamed she had woken up with wetness down the front of her night shirt. She had thought she'd been crying, but instead, it had been blood running down her face from her eyes and nose. The red had been so startling against the white sheets. And in her belly she had felt a sick, hot burrowing, the rat plague breeding a fever that would destroy her small body...

Now, her pillow was dry. So she had not even cried in her sleep. Some mornings, when she woke and found dampness there, it took her a good long while to calm down and stop turning the pillow over frantically to search for smears of rusty red.

Emily propped herself upright and blinked through her tangled hair. Wintry morning light was streaming into the room. The other bed was neatly made, no sign of her tutor. Callista had let her sleep in.

When Emily crossed the metal bridge, she saw that Admiral Havelock was shooting down in the yard. His pistol sent up little bursts of smoke as it spat bullets. An array of old bottles and cans were propped up on a long bench. A few had fallen already.

The day was bright and cold. A few seagulls circled high up in the sky, through the constant streams of billowing smoke that the factory chimneys spat up. Even the smoke seemed to freeze in the air. 

In the bathroom, the pipes groaned and clanked, and spat out only a little bit of hot water as Emily washed her face. The rest was so cold her hands grew pink and numb.

At the Tower she would've been taking a hot bath on a morning like this. She wouldn't have had to contend herself with a grubby servants' bathroom. She would've gone to the white-tiled, airy chamber attached to her bedrooms, and would've suffused herself in hot bubbles while a handmaiden brushed out her hair. She'd have been looking out of the window, watching eagerly for snow.

Downstairs, it appeared that everyone but her and Corvo was awake. Cecelia was hauling heaps of chipped plates and mugs out of a back room, setting the tables for them to eat. A pot of porridge already sat there, watched over by Ms. Lydia, who looked to be the most awake one by far.

Lord Pendleton sat at the bar, propping his bony forehead up with one hand while the other cradled a tall glass. Mr. Joplin was talking animatedly to Ms. Curnow, who nodded periodically but kept glancing around the room, searching.

The admiral's gunfire echoed much louder down here. Emily couldn't help but wince a little at a particularly loud shot. Wallace scoffed each time, in between wiping down the bar, as if it was beyond him how that brute from the Navy could be performing target practice before breakfast.

The gloopy mess in the big pot looked very unappealing. But it steamed hotly, and when Emily leaned closer she caught a mouth-watering whiff of cinnamon and sugar.

Ms. Curnow came over to her, seeming relieved to have an excuse to get away from Mr. Joplin. "Emily," she greeted, and touched her shoulder briefly. 

No curtsy or bow of the head, but that was alright. Emily was kind of getting used to it. At this point, perhaps she'd have found it stranger if her tutor had suddenly started being appropriately deferential. Callista asked, "Did you sleep well?"

Emily mustered up a smile. She always asked that question, and almost every morning Emily lied. 

Sometimes she couldn't fall asleep at all. Those nights, she stared at the faint moonlight on the cobwebbed ceiling. Her heart hammered like a drum in her chest as the shadows shrunk and grew and seemed to grow long, spindly arms that reached for her.

Other times she sunk into slumber but wept in her sleep. Then she woke to a damp pillow that sent her into a gasping, blinding panic, drowsy as she was, until she'd patted at her face and felt no heat of fever, no tickle in her throat, and her hands had come away clean. 

And then there were the nightmares. Emily wondered if she ever made a noise, if she squirmed and whimpered, as those horrible older Pendletons, the assassins with their whaler masks, and the ladies from the Golden Cat pursued her through the dark.

She hoped not. She hoped Callista believed her repeated lie, and wouldn't be prodding her for details.

"Yes," she said. "Really well." She glanced quickly towards the stairwell. "I'll go wake Corvo."

"Let him sleep, my lady," said Lord Pendleton, suddenly, from behind her. He had come over from the bar. "He's had a hard couple of days." 

His face was not cast into shadow, and so Emily didn't flinch. Sometimes she did, when she saw him in the early mornings, because he looked so very much like his brothers.

Perhaps he sounded a little bitter, but his half-smile was friendly enough. "And he has a harder day ahead of him still."

Emily was already halfway across the room. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes—she couldn't imagine that Corvo had slept through the admiral's racket. "No, he doesn't like to sleep in."

The door to the pub opened, and in came a gust of cold air, along with Admiral Havelock. He smelled of gun oil and smoke. His graying hair was windswept, and he was still holstering his pistol, a huge, chunky thing slung across his chest. 

"Perhaps," he said, apparently having heard the last of the conversation. "But these days, he's surely grateful for every wink of sleep he can get."

Emily frowned at the two men. What did they know of Corvo's sleeping habits? They had not know him as long as she had, and how dare they imply that they knew him better than she did?

She turned and went into the corridor without a reply. It was rude, and her old governess would likely have shaken her head at her. But it was also rude to dissuade her from seeing _her_ Lord Protector.

It turned out she did not have to brave much of the perpetually shadowed stairwell. As she hastened her steps past a particularly dark corner, she ran into Corvo on the first-floor landing.

He had been coming down on near-silent feet. He reached out to steady her. Emily let out her breath in a rush—she'd been holding it, she realized, as though, if she did not inhale the dark, dusty-smelling air, no strange shapes would melt out of the corners.

"Good morning!" Emily blurted, and her smile was born at least half from relief.

Corvo's hand was warm on her arm until he dropped it. He inclined his head to her as he was wont to do, not quite a bow—which would've been too formal for this setting, an abandoned pub surrounded by commoners—but close.

They went down the stairs together. Perhaps Emily was a little shivery, but if Corvo noticed how she tried to stay in the lamp light, he did not say. She tried to talk to him over her shoulder and walk at the same time, and had to support herself against the rickety wooden railing.

"—and the porridge looks _awful_ ," she informed him, gravely. "But it smells really good. I'll eat some first if you're scared."

Corvo smirked warmly at her, raising an eyebrow. "I know," Emily said, "I'm the high-born lady and you should be the food tester."

The others greeted Corvo with friendly nods and 'good morning's. True to her word, Emily tested the porridge, and found its sweetness bursting warmly on her tongue, cinnamon and honey and thoroughly cooked milk.

She deemed it safe for Cecelia to load up another portion. The steaming porridge went into the slightly chipped ceramic bowl. This time, Corvo hid his smile, and only nodded a solemn thank-you at her when she passed his bowl down the table.

Conversation around the table was slow, but Emily did not mind. The admiral, for all that he'd had some exercise this morning, did not look intellectually stirred by Overseer Martin's absent-minded musings over something to do with the Abbey. 

Emily only listened with half an ear. She was content to fill her belly with fragrant porridge, and occasionally bump her heels against the bench until Ms. Curnow gave her a quelling look.

The blue liquid in her cup tasted strange and acidic. She forced it down with a grimace. They all did, with varying expressions of distaste, while Mr. Joplin looked on proudly. 

For each breakfast and dinner, they all got a bit of his spiritual remedy. Emily did not know if that was the reason why none of them had caught the plague yet. 

She did know that there weren't many rats about. When Cecelia spotted one outside, she killed it with a long stick she kept in the piles of metal rubble in the front yard, and then poured vinegar over the spot where the rat had been.

Emily drank her portions of elixir diligently. She also watched the others to see if they did. Nobody seemed to be so foolish as to discard his share. They were all cautious—perhaps not _afraid_ , because the adults hardly ever seemed afraid of anything, but watchful.

It reassured her somewhat. Cecelia kept killing the rats and the others drank their elixir and maybe they would all get out alive. It seemed hard to believe. With the panic that had swallowed the city whole, it was hard to think of that none of them would fall ill. 

But she tried to hold on to that thought. So long as the adults weren't too worried, she would try not to be as well. She choked down the last of her cup, and reached again for the porridge.

* * *

Lunch time brought a few slivers of thin, wintry sunlight. The light illuminated the tavern with a watery sheen, barely turning the inside up to gray.

Corvo had gone fetching supplies with Mr. Beechworth. Emily had tried to convince them to let her come along; she liked the boat, and she liked being out on the river, even if it was dreadfully cold. Predictably, they had not let her. 

Emily did not know what the others were doing, but the only one who had lunch with her at one of the scratched tables was Overseer Martin.

It was still odd to spend so much time in one place. At the Tower, she would've been rushing from room to room, either playing or completing some homework. Of course, the pub had all those upstairs floors to explore. But it was not nearly the same as an entire sprawling palace at her disposal.

The distant tinny noise of the loudspeaker came periodically through the walls. Muffled though it was, Emily had been staying here long enough to be able to guess what it said. Something about curfew or the plague or the quarantined districts.

Usually, she tried not to listen. She had heard enough of the announcements at the Golden Cat. Even as the notices about her mother's funeral had shaken her to the core, she had pretended stubbornly that they weren't real, that someone must have hijacked the broadcast control station in the Tower. 

And now every time she heard that voice, it gave her a sick jolt, even when the announcer didn't say anything about the late Empress.

She shoved her fork through the peas on her plate. Or what she thought were peas, anyway, it was hard to tell. They were eating a lot of canned goods. Sometimes they tried to scavenge fresh meat and fruit from the few ships that still came to Dunwall's docks, but they rarely managed.

Overseer Martin seemed tense. Perhaps he was wondering how the others fared on the river. The echo of Mr. Beechworth's boat had long since faded, and Emily knew from experience that it would be some time before it came back.

That first week, Emily had kept thinking she heard it come back. She'd spent whole mornings running out of the tavern again and again. It had been only her stretched, overwrought anxiety deceiving her ears. Of course there had been nothing on the mud-brown waters of the river, except a few lit buoys.

She hoped that the supply run wouldn't take much longer. She didn't know if Corvo had any important things to do this afternoon. If not, then maybe she could convince him to do some climbing with her. It was quite cold outside, but it would be a distraction. A little puzzle piece of life as it had used to be.

The fish on the side was slightly charred and too salty. Emily choked it down anyway. Her knife slipped in her grip. Her old governess would have been fussing and scolding if she'd seen Emily like this, stabbing a knife into the fish's poor unprotected belly.

She chewed and raised her eyes to Overseer Martin's face. Deep furrows of thought and concern had dug their way into his brow.

"Why are you worried?" Emily mumbled through the fish—just because she could, because there was no one to chastise her. "Corvo is really good at fighting. And he's just getting food with Mr. Beechworth. They'll be fine." 

The Overseer started a little, like he had altogether forgotten her presence. Emily suppressed a scowl. You did not simply _forget_ that you were eating your lunch with a future Empress.

"I'm sure Corvo is very good at fighting," Mr. Martin said, stiffly. He seemed to be agreeing only for politeness' sake. His own food sat nearly untouched before him. "There will be many guards. It will be best if he moves unseen..."

"Why? He's really good at fighting, he could just kill them," Emily said. The peas were really quite mushy. More like soup than a proper side dish. She shoved then around on her plate with her fork. She was so tired of fish.

She didn't notice the silence until it had stretched for a while. The tavern room was quiet. A clock ticked somewhere, and she could hear the faint burbling noises of the stove from the kitchen in the back.

And Mr. Martin was watching her with mild dismay. It was a look she knew from her tutors—the one that made her realize that she had done something wrong, and that they would tell on her. Emily had often pretended not to remember the incident when the Empress confronted her after the fact.

Except Mr. Martin could not complain to Jessamine about her daughter anymore. A chill ran down Emily's back.

In a quiet voice, Mr. Martin asked, "You would ascend the throne on a mountain of corpses?"

Emily grimaced. That was a horrible thing to say, and it wasn't what she had meant anyway. "There's already a mountain of corpses from the plague," she pointed out.

The lines around Mr. Martin's mouth firmed. "You are correct, my lady," he said tightly. "Too many have died already. There's no need to add to them."

Emily frowned. She hadn't meant to make him angry with her. Now he sat there straight-backed and with righteous indignation drawn about him like a cold, off-putting cloak. And how dare he look at her like that anyway? She would be Empress. Didn't he have to address her with more respect, even if he disagreed?

"But all those soldiers," Emily said. Her peas were cooling into a congealed mass on the cheap porcelain plate. The food really was dreadful. She wondered who had cooked. "Aren't they bad people?"

"They are doing their jobs."

And that was just ridiculous. Emily was only ten, but she wasn't a tiny giggling girl who did not grasp how the world worked, and she knew that was not true. She put her knife down with more force than necessary. It clinked sharply against the plate.

"They're _not_ ," she said hotly. "They're doing awful things. They threw Corvo into prison and they want him dead. And they covered up who really k-killed mother."

For a moment, the Overseer's face softened a little. He had heard her stutter, of course he had. 

Emily sat up as straight as she could and glared at him. She did not want to be _comforted_ , she did not want some platitude about how he was sorry to have brought up the memory.

She was in luck. Overseer Martin frowned. He seemed thoroughly unwilling to budge, even at the reminder that he was speaking to a grieving child.

"The task of the City Watch and the wardens of Coldridge Prison is to obey their regent," Mr. Martin said slowly. He spoke with care, searching for the right words that would convince her. "It is not their fault they have been given orders that have upended the city."

Emily scowled. Perhaps that was true. She doubted that the lowliest city soldier knew all of what the Spymaster had done to ascend to the throne. 

But she didn't _want_ to be convinced. Mr. Martin was defending the guards who would just slaughter their little conspiracy on sight. They weren't like the watchful men from the City Watch that she'd known in the Tower, with never a stray speck of dust on their neat uniforms.

No, these soldiers were entirely different. They wore the familiar blue, but they were brutes. They would burst into the Hound Pits with their guns and they would shoot even Mr. Joplin, whose mind was so brilliant, and Callista, who slept beside Emily at night. 

It did not sit right with her. Stubbornly, she said, "If they don't agree with the Lord Regent, they can find new jobs. "

Mr. Martin sighed. "Let me put it this way. Do you wish the burden of so much killing on Corvo?"

A brief pause. Emily blinked. Another shivery wave of cold ran down her back. She had not expected him to put it that way. 

Corvo... Corvo liked fighting, did he not? At the Tower, he had always been training with some other soldiers. Emily was no expert, of course, but she thought he'd looked like he enjoyed it. He had even begun to teach her, just a little, a few easy things like how to wrestle free of someone's grip on her blouse.

"Burden?" Emily said at last.

"There is a weight," said Mr. Martin. "A weight that comes with taking lives and moving through the shadows as Corvo does. Even in service of an Empire, it wears on a man, after a time."

Emily stared at him. She felt stricken, reeling, like something had gripped the entire dusty tavern and shaken it. 

The words had bludgeoned her to a halt. She had not— it wasn't like it had never occurred to her that it might haunt a person, if you ever had to take someone else's life. 

But she had never really thought about it.

She knew Corvo had been her mother's Lord Protector for a long time. He had killed people before. But surely he'd gotten used to it. It was his job, and he'd never seemed to have a problem with it before. And he knew it was for the best. That had to help, didn't it?

"That's not true," Emily said. She tried for confident and dismissive, but her voice just sounded thin and high. "Corvo likes being Lord Protector, I know he does."

Mr. Martin inclined his head in assent. "Right again," he said. "He does."

There was a short silence. Distantly, Emily could hear rummaging and clanging from the kitchen. Her fork lay forgotten next to her plate on the scuffed table top. 

She hadn't thought about whether or not she cared how many men of the City Watch fell to Corvo's blade. They were stupid anyway, listening to the loudspeakers as if they preached gospel. And just going along with the horrible farce that her own Lord Protector had killed Jessamine, honestly, it was a wonder the city even functioned with those spineless buffoons running about.

Emily realized, with a sick, sinking feeling, that she did not really _want_ to care. But neither did she understand what Mr. Martin was saying. About Corvo, and about deaths caused by his hand.

"Have you never wondered," Mr. Martin said quietly, "what it takes out of a man, to stand between an Empress and paid murderers? What sacrifices a man must make to become the small cog that turns and turns under the pressure as we shift an Empire to our will?"

Emily was silent. She could not think of anything to say. All she knew was that the words shook her and made her stomach turn in a way that had nothing to do with the overly salty fish. She could only stare dumbly at Overseer Martin, like some raw, exposed part of her had taken an unexpected blow and was gasping for breath.

"They follow you," he said. He looked at her steadily. "The people you kill, even while you are doing your duty, even at a time like this. They follow you into sleep. In your waking hours. You cannot run from them."

That, she could barely grasp. Her head spun a little, and she felt that horrible clenched-up feeling in her chest again, the one that heralded tears. 

But she did understand the last bit. "Corvo wouldn't run from anything," Emily said. 

Or snapped, more like. Her breath came short and rasped wetly in her throat, with something like panic. 

She felt watery and unsteady, and like a sniffle was coming on, and she had borne far harder trials. She would _not_ dissolve over this, she wouldn't weep into her overcooked lunch just because she was ten and didn't understand what Overseer Martin was saying to her, or why he had begun scolding her in the first place.

Mr. Martin shook his head. "Some things are better fled from than faced. No, hear me on this," he said, insistently, as she opened her mouth to protest. "Corvo has done so much already. He has spent half a year in Coldridge Prison awaiting his execution—"

"I didn't mean for that to happen!" Emily blurted out, far too loudly. She didn't notice that she'd leaned across the table until her stomach bumped into the wood. "I would've gone and found him! But those terrible Pendletons locked me up, and then they foisted me off on the Golden Cat—"

A door creaked. Warm light from the hearth fell across the bar as Wallace poked his head out of the kitchen. "My lady, is something amiss?"

She only recognized Wallace by his voice. Her vision had blurred: she could not see anything of him beyond a faded silhouette against the light from the kitchen fires.

"The fish is salty," Emily said waveringly.

Wallace sighed. "I know, your ladyship. I'm terribly sorry, but it's the best we can do at this time. I have a few apples here, if you would like some."

Emily didn't even remember if she nodded or shook her head. But the sliver of light thinned as the kitchen door closed. 

"I meant to lay no blame on you, my lady," said Overseer Martin. It was like Wallace's interruption had reminded him who he was speaking to. His voice was gentler. "I only meant that we should leave Corvo this choice. He will get the work done either way, we both know he will. Leave him to choose how many more deaths he would heap upon himself."

Emily pushed her plate away and slipped off the bench. She sniffled, and said, "I'm not hungry anymore."

* * *

She felt calmer later, doing sums with Ms. Curnow in a different corner of the tavern. Still shaken, with that familiar, awful feeling pushing up into her chest—but steady enough to sit calmly with her tutor and think of nothing but the numbers on her papers.

Perhaps Callista noticed her distraction, but perhaps she did not. At any rate, she seemed to realize that this was not Emily playing or being stubborn just for the sake of it. 

She left Emily mostly alone. She gave her sheets of sums to add and subtract, and checked over the finished work as Emily handed the pages back. If she leveled a few searching, probing looks at her unusually quiet student, Emily pretended not to notice.

The image stayed with her. The small cog, being turned and grinding the whole machinery to a stand-still and then forcing it slowly, inch by inch, into a new direction, while its little teeth were whittled down to shiny, scalded stubs by the heat.

Corvo never appeared to her like he was under a lot of pressure. Or perhaps she was just too unobservant. She was ten. She had never killed a person in her life and doubted she would ever have to. What did she know of the burdens of the world that Overseer Martin had told her about?

She hung listlessly about the tavern as the pale midday sun slowly climbed past its zenith. Finally, when the door opened to admit Mr. Beechworth and Corvo and a whole lot of barrels, she jumped up.

For a while, a commotion built up in the very front of the room. Cool air streamed inside, displacing the pleasant heat that had gathered around the stove. Barrels were rolled inside under the admiral's direction, and taken down into the basement. Corvo and Mr. Beechworth both looked windswept and chilly. Corvo had already removed his mask and had stuffed it into his pocket. 

At last, when Corvo went upstairs to stash away his heavy coat, Emily went with him. She saw his surprised glance when he spotted the small follower he had acquired. But he let her be—he allowed her to trail him to his room.

Up in the attic, it was warm, at least in Corvo's room. The cold in the hallway made Emily cringe. She wondered if she would freeze to the metal walkway if she tried to go over to her tower now.

The stove crackled in the corner. The air above it wavered with heat. A few of the spider webs on the windows wafted gently in the stream of warm air. Someone had put a single oil lamp on the desk.

Corvo took off his heavy coat. Then he took a moment to study Emily, with a carefully disguised amount of concern. At last he stashed his crossbow in one of the desk's rickety drawers. 

Emily rolled her eyes and pointedly folded her hands behind her back. She wouldn't touch, she knew the rules. Curious she might have been, but she was not stupid.

She watched him put the mask on the table. She briefly saw the inner workings of it, the lenses and little dials. She wondered how heavy it was.

"I did sums with Ms. Curnow," Emily said suddenly, perhaps more loudly than she should have. 

Corvo's silence never bothered her. But just now, it felt probing, like he was listening in the spaces between her words. Like he was divining what had happened to her today just by listening. 

It wasn't like he could hear an echo of her argument with Overseer Martin just from looking at her. Emily shook herself. She was just being silly now, a sensitive nerve.

Corvo tilted his head in acknowledgement. "It went great," Emily said. "I only made a few mistakes. Callista said I can inventory the whiskey supplies if I keep up the work but I told her Empresses don't do that."

Even in the dim light, she caught Corvo's brief quirk of a smile. He was unloading his pistol, bullet by bullet. They clinked into his waiting palm. 

Emily suddenly wondered how many times he had fired the weapon tonight. How many bullets had burst hotly out of the barrel to end somebody's life... how much more weight had been heaped onto Corvo's shoulders.

She wandered over to the stove. It was warm, at least, and gave her something to do with her hands, so they might stop their slight shaking. Her thoughts were small balls of rubber set free and thrown into a room, where they now skipped and bounced off the walls.

Restlessness built at the back of her neck. She knew Corvo was watching her. The quiet seemed to build, a palpable weight. And in just a moment he would probe her gently on why she was up here in his room. It would be nothing overt, just a raised eyebrow, certainly not inquisitive enough to make her feel unwelcome.

But she did not know what to _say_ to him. She didn't even really know what she wanted. Only that she had felt shaken and unsteady all afternoon, and she... she was only ten, and for once she wanted to act her age, and ask for some sort of reassurance, though she didn't know how.

At last she found herself blurting out, without preamble, "Corvo, are you sad?"

Corvo paused from where he'd been unlacing his boots. He gave her a surprised look, then shook his head. He looked baffled. Emily doubted he had really understood what she'd meant.

Emily knotted her fingers in front of her. Why had she said _that_ , of all things? The words had just tumbled out. She should've waited for a better moment. 

Perhaps her wavering voice had compelled Corvo to lie. Most likely, he did not know what she was talking about, because she had just hurled the question at him without any kind of explanation.

Corvo gave her a long, considering look. Emily fought not to squirm. But then he just stepped out of his boots and stood.

He was so tall, Emily thought. He looked even taller here, in the attic with its slouching ceiling and the cobwebbed pipes running across the room. He raised his brows at her in a question, then tapped his knuckles against one of the ceiling's wooden support beams.

Emily gaped at him. For a moment she thought she'd read him wrong, but that rarely happened anymore, and certainly never when she watched so closely. "A climbing lesson?" she said. " _Inside?_ "

Corvo inclined his head to her. A little smile was nestled into the corner of his mouth.

"Ms. Lydia won't like that," Emily said. 

But she found herself smiling back hesitantly. If climbing was what Corvo wanted now, she was more than ready to oblige him. She had thought of it earlier anyway, and...

And maybe he was quite familiar with the weight on his shoulders, the precise shape and balance of it, and knew how to lighten the load. Spending time with her had to be so different from skulking around in the shadows of Dunwall—a pastime, one where a missed grab would only lead to slight bruises and not to plummeting falls into a nest of guards.

Emily took a deep breath and let it out. It felt better than the breaths from before, like this one finally reached where it was supposed to go.

Corvo gave a light shrug. Emily grinned—they would brave Ms. Lydia's disapproval side by side. If playing with her lifted Corvo's heart, Emily would gladly endure a scolding. Together they went into the cold hallway, leaving behind the stove and its comfortable heat.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The female figurine retreated to the edge of the scuffed table. Desperately, it struggled to keep its body between the attacker and its tiny companion. It wavered back and forth, but there was nowhere left for it to go, nowhere to escape her adversary.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're past the halfway point now! Again, the song Emily plays is Edvard Grieg's [Anitra's Dance](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7GDt44sgag)\--I'm way too obsessed with it for my own good. I really hope you enjoy this update--tell me what you think! :)

The female figurine retreated to the edge of the scuffed table. Desperately, it struggled to keep its body between the attacker and its tiny companion. It wavered back and forth, but there was nowhere left for it to go, nowhere to escape her adversary.

Emily's fingers tromped in. Her nails tapped against the wood, imitating running feet. 

Sure of the aim of his blade, the assassin dashed towards the Empress, already triumphant.

But then the male figure swept in from the side, and put himself bravely between the ladies and their attacker. Mr. Joplin had carved it to wear a long coat and brandish a sword. 

This sword was pointed threateningly towards the assassin. Emily growled, "Get away from them!" 

Then she winced, realizing her mistake at once. Obviously Corvo didn't speak. 

Emily bit her lip. She felt like a heel. How could she have _forgotten_ that, even in the middle of her game? 

She swept a furtive glance around the room. But it seemed that no one had noticed her slip-up, or was even watching her. 

The loyalists were hunched over the far end of the bar, bent over some documents and conversing quietly. Admiral Havelock held a cigar and had his forehead propped up in that same hand. It looked like the thin trail of smoke emerged from the worried lines on his face.

She whispered, because surely Corvo's thoughts were all the louder for his lack of a voice, "Hold on, my lady, I will save you!"

The assassin and the wooden figure engaged in a heated battle. The small wooden sword came wickedly at Emily's knuckles. The edge glanced off her fingernail.

"The Empress dies today!" called the assassin. Emily made Corvo's figurine dodge a heated attack, one that drove Corvo a little further away from the two frightened ladies. "The Kaldwin dynasty will perish!"

"Not if I stop you," Emily whispered fiercely.

Corvo's sword arced upwards. Emily tilted his figure in a graceful twirl, and as the tiny wooden sword poked her fingers, she let her other hand collapse. The assassin had been stabbed through the heart.

Emily hurled her own little self towards Corvo immediately. "Corvo!" she said, pitching her voice higher. "I was so frightened!"

Empress Jessamine came closer, too. The three wooden toys huddled at the edge of the table as though sharing a secret. She let her free hand lay for a moment, the fingers splayed out gracelessly like limbs twitching in their death throes.

Then she swept her fingers away, as the assassin's body was carried from the pavilion. Gently, she clanked the figurines together in a hug.

"It's all right," she whispered, for Corvo, though neither her nor her mother would've been able to hear. "Hush, it's all right now..."

That afternoon in the pavilion, Emily thought, suddenly—what would Corvo have said, had he been able to speak? Would he have shouted at them to run, taunted the assassin into attacking him first to buy them an extra second?

Emily put the figures down. She traced a fingernail over the wood grain of the tabletop. A squirming restlessness rose in her. She glanced at the men again.

None were paying attention to her. Havelock had transferred his cigar to his other hand, and was gesturing with it. Lord Pendleton leaned away from the trail of smoke with an expression of polite distaste.

At least Emily had gotten to scream. She had screamed when the assassin had skewered her mother's body like she hadn't been telling Emily stories just the night before, like she hadn't scolded Emily just an hour ago about leaving her crayons strewn across the Tower. 

Corvo had had to watch. He had been unable to make a single sound.

All this time, and she had never found out what had happened to Corvo's voice. Once, when she'd been just old enough to recognize his perpetual silence as an oddity rather than something that her young mind accepted within its cosmos as a given, she had asked her mother about it.

Jessamine had grown very serious. She'd told her only that it was an old injury, and that she was never to ask Corvo about it. And she had not. There were so many more interesting things about Corvo, like how tall he was, and how fast he could move, the intricate technology of his weapons. 

After that brief moment of wondering, she had never asked again. His voicelessness had just melted into the background, a fact, nothing to take note of anymore. A familiar component. 

She didn't think that she had ever thought to wonder how much it burdened him.

But that was what she had been doing so poorly, wasn't it? Overseer Martin had seen right through her. She was a spoiled child. She understood nothing of the weights of the world. 

The door to the Hound Pits Pub opened. The stained glass cast shimmering reflections onto the tiles. Emily looked up instantly, but it was just Mr. Joplin. He gave her a distracted smile when he saw what she was playing with. Then he strode to the bar for a drink.

Emily looked at the figures. She sighed. If she was honest with herself, she had to admit she felt strangely bored with this game.

All morning she had played it, after Mr. Joplin had given her more of his carved figurines that he liked to work on in his spare time. And yet, it was oddly like trying to fix a painting and choosing the wrong colors.

The end was the problem, Emily knew. The outcome was always the same. She felt like she was reaching for something, stretching herself up on her tiptoes. Her imagination billowed and expanded...

But something in her was not tall enough for the task. She couldn't think of a way to bring that day at the Tower to a true, well-rounded happy end. Even when the wooden figures stood huddled together, safe at last, it seemed stale, unreal. 

Which it _was_ , of course. Emily hadn't forgotten that. And yet... And yet she had hoped that it would help, somehow. That the little game would soothe some of the rawness she still felt inside, that perpetual tilting sensation of her whole world drifting unmoored.

Emily put the figurines away. Before, she had never really used to think about what she could or could not do. At the Hound Pits, it seemed there were many tasks she could not master.

Outside, it was cooler than expected. Emily closed her eyes and took a long, slow breath of the chilly air. 

For a moment she held it in her lungs. She imagined she was back at the Tower and it was an afternoon like any other. Soon her handmaidens would come fussing over her catching cold in the wind.

But there was no smell of snow yet. The Hound Pits were too quiet. The Tower was huge and echoing, but there were always the footsteps of guards, servants flitting about, music or conversation as visiting dignitaries passed their time.

Half-frozen grass crackled under her shoes. She wished there had been snow. It would've made everything so much prettier. It would have covered the ugly, rusty hunks of metal. The side of the yard was cluttered with rotten wood, the wreck of an odd boat or two. Down by the riverside, the ground turned sandy before it sloped into the rocks of the river bed.

It was there that she had found the bone-thing she'd tucked under her pillow for luck. Perhaps it was something from whoever had lived on this stretch of land before Dunwall's time. Her history tutors had sometimes talked about that, about the primitive and Stricture-less culture that had lived there before the city had been built. 

She liked to pretend that the bone-thing was from back then. She liked to think that it had endured the river currents and the churning waves along the ships' pathways. It had endured all this time. Perhaps, now that she had found it, it would help them all endure, too.

The wooden toys clicked together in her pocket, enticing. But the grass was wilted and cold, and there were no flowers to be seen all across the yard. If it hadn't been so cold and dreary, she would've played that the figurines had gone on a holiday in the country. 

Or she might've picked flowers. A bouquet of daisies for Corvo's room—another vase on the bar downstairs to brighten up the tavern. And maybe, if it was possible to see the faces of dead people in your sleep, the flowers would cheer her loyalists up.

She looked out onto the river. The Wrenhaven was foggy, gray billows of moisture drifting across the placidly moving water like clouds. Emily couldn't see the other riverbank, not even the Tower. It was like the Hound Pits had detached from Dunwall, and were now floating on a misty island, far away from the rats and the plague.

Sometimes she still imagined she could hear the rumble of Mr. Beechworth's engine. She wondered if she would remember this noise for all her life, if she would startle awake at night thinking that she'd heard it, even when she was once again safely up in Dunwall Tower.

A whaling trawler blew its horn in the chilly mist. Emily squinted through the fog for the ship. But she saw nothing but the river water, the blurred forms of a few buoys. 

She did not hear Mr. Beechworth's boat. And the cold had crept under her clothes, clinging damply to her hair. The noise of the horn traveled fast, a disembodied hoarse wail across the water. She shivered, and went back inside.

* * *

The dance faltered with a discordant jumble of notes. Emily's foot slipped off the pedal. It banged back into the slightly moldy wood of the piano, sending up a thin cloud of dust from the pile of sheet music on top.

"Buggering shit," Emily said.

Then she cringed. She listened for the other occupants of the large room. 

But none seemed to have heard her. No reprimand about her language was forthcoming. There was a murmur of voices in the kitchen, muffled by the wall, and the sizzling and popping of the oven.

From a corner came the intermittent clatter of scissors and needles. Ms. Lydia was sitting in a corner on a worn leather bench, her sewing kit strewn across the table.

Occasionally, she tapped her foot to Emily's halting music. She had unearthed a pile of slightly dusty skirts from a cupboard somewhere in the cavernous servants' quarters of the pub, and declared she would adjust them for Emily to wear.

Emily had almost bristled at the notion that she would ever wear a skirt. She did not want to step into one of those things and get forever tangled in lengths of fabric. Skirts were for _grandmothers_ , not young Empresses-to-be. They were so old-fashioned. 

But the point remained that the few changes of clothes she'd brought along from the Golden Cat would not last forever. And although Emily had only ever worn the finest laces and ribbons in her life, she did understand the pressure of necessity. 

So she would wear the skirts. She'd wrinkle her nose at them, but she'd wear them.

Ms. Lydia did not chide her either. No one was paying attention to her. It was a strange thing, the lonely feeling of a weight suddenly removed. It had left her slightly chilled, now that she was not smothered under its warmth. 

But it was also freeing. She could make as many mistakes as she liked. There were no swarms of music teachers hovering over her shoulder. She could even curse if she got it wrong.

Emily turned the page back to the beginning. The print was slightly, but she could still read the music.

It was the dance she had learned just a few weeks before her mother... before the pavilion. It was a capricious, unpredictable melody, one that skipped around like a newborn foal. The teasing little twirls reminded her of lacy embroidery lining the edges of some flowing, fine-woven fabric.

For her small hands, some of the stretches were too great still, and she had to make do with half of the chords depicted. Ms. Curnow had adjusted the music for her. But Emily enjoyed it, even as her littlest fingers began to ache at the joints.

It must have been a long time since anyone had played on the piano. The keys were yellowed with age. Dust had settled deep into its inner mechanics. 

All in all, it should've been way more out of tune. Sometimes Emily wondered if they'd gotten it tuned just before she'd arrived. Perhaps Corvo had told them she liked to play. It was the kind of thing she thought he would do.

The piano was quite old. The sheet music had left a darker spot on the cover, and sunlight had bleached the rest of the wood. It was a ramshackle, rickety version of the polished, gleaming instruments at the tower. But it still worked.

Emily took her foot off the pedal. The first few chords were hesitant, slow. Then she gained speed and confidence. The inner mechanics of the piano creaked slightly as she played.

Outside, it was raining, sheeting down thin pinpricks of icy water, clattering on the high metal walkway that connected the attic to the little tower. Emily could hear the drops pitter-patter against the windows and the walls. 

She was still not sure whether she liked the rain or not. 

At first, when the plague had come, Emily had found herself wishing for more rain. She had thought that maybe it would wash the city clean. It'd wash away all the grit that stuck to the walls and the pavement. Blood and rot would be rinsed out of the sewers.

But then she'd thought of the water, and how it had already claimed a part of the city. What if it rained so much that Wrenhaven River overflowed, until only the Tower's spires stood tall above the water? The river would rise and submerge the whole city in another flood, until every briny drip and puddle were ripe with the rot of the plague.

Emily fumbled with her ring finger. It slipped between the black keys, and the melody broke off in a discordant clang.

"Damn this to the Void and back," she said to the sheet music. Then she had to take a moment to finish giggling to herself. It was another one of the curses that the admiral used.

The rain sheeted relentlessly against the windows. The wind pushed it to pelt the house with its icy pinpricks, and the doors groaned in their frames as thin trails of cold air whipped through.

At any rate, she thought as she turned the page back, she hoped that it was drier on Kaldwin's Bridge.

There was a subtle difference in the air in the pub when Corvo was on a mission, or when he was just going for supplies with Mr. Beechworth or sparring with the admiral.

Perhaps it was only Emily herself, feeling keenly the absence of her friend. But she thought that the others seemed tenser, too. So much hinged on Corvo. So much weight was in his hands—a cog, Overseer Martin had said, to shift the city's intricate machinery in their favor.

None would admit it. Still, Emily knew that the loyalists were worried, too. Corvo was a formidable fighter, but... What if he slipped on a wet roof and fell? What if one of the tallboys got him? They were so fast and strong in their creaking stilts.

Emily sighed and shook her head. It wouldn't do to think endlessly on whether Corvo was just now crossing blades with a battle-hardened officer of the City Watch. 

She would sit here and play, and repeat her favorite parts—the ones where her wrists crossed over each other and the tune raced its own echo in the melody—and try to ignore the rain.

The pedal creaked under her foot as she pushed it down. Emily played slower than usual. 

Her thoughts kept drifting, not unlike the mist across the river. If Emily was honest with herself, she had to admit that a small part of her hoped Corvo wouldn't come back with the Royal Physician in tow.

It wasn't that she _disliked_ Sokolov. She just thought he was a bit scary, with his wild hair and beard and his bushy, frowning eyebrows over the eerie glint in his eyes. And he was so very clever. Even her mother had said so. What if he found some way to call for help, and brought the soldiers of the City Watch to their hideout?

With the rain pelting the windows and bouncing tinnily off the shutters, Emily did not hear the boat return. She worked steadily. The more she played, the faster her fingers seemed to gain a springy grace. No matter how high up they had to jump, they found the keys.

She did notice the rush of activity to the door. It opened to let in a gust of cold, damp air. Admiral Havelock all but ran outside. His booted feet splashed in the mud. Overseer Martin followed on his heels. He hadn't even bothered to put on his coat.

Slowly, Emily rose. Behind her, the kitchen door creaked and she glanced back to see Cecelia and Wallace poking their heads out.

At the door, Emily looked out into the rain. She caught only a glimpse of Corvo as he removed his mask, the suddenness of his pale face in the gloom. Then she lost sight of him amidst the tangle of the others.

But he was there. And nobody was raising their voice, so he had to be healthy and hale. Emily let out a slow breath. She looked at her own shadow, cast out into the yard by the lamp light from the tavern. 

She decided that she did not want to see them lug around Sokolov's unconscious body. She had never really liked the man, but that didn't mean she'd enjoy seeing him being locked up. She went back inside.

She was playing, slower still, that difficult section at the end when the others came back. Lord Pendleton brushed his soaked fringe off his forehead. The admiral had lost his cigar somehow. Corvo's boots left trails of wetness on the floor.

Corvo came and stood by the stove. He warmed his hands over it. He stood a few paces away from her, but he radiated the damp cold he'd brought in from the river.

Emily gave him a distracted smile. The melody really was quite hard to carry on. She let it flow as best as she could. There was something about that last page, a new accord to be found between the melody and its echo, running side by side.

Then, inevitably, she slipped again. Her littlest finger reached too high, and it created not the spun-glass melody but a sudden, out of place clang like an ill-fitting jigsaw piece being crammed into place.

Her fingers dropped off the keys. The paper crackled with age when Emily turned the page back. " _Shit_ ," she muttered.

Then she winced. She had quite forgotten who was standing beside her. She dared a glance at Corvo—he must have heard her, she'd spoken quietly but not that quietly.

But he wasn't looking back at her, or gave any other sign that he'd heard the curse word fall from the future Empress' young mouth. Actually...

Emily frowned. Actually, he was not looking at her at all. His hands moved mechanically. He passed his fingers over the heat that the stove radiated, warming up. Something shone blackly on the back of his left hand.

What little she could see of Corvo's face looked pale. Perhaps just with cold, but perhaps with something stranger.

A slow churning started up in her belly. Emily stared up at Corvo and felt not unlike she'd been walking down the stairs and had missed a step. 

Why was he staring at the wall like that, like it held all the answers to the questions of the cosmos? Emily shivered. Anxiety trickled in like an icy wash of rain from outside. She knew nothing about Sokolov's private residence, if he conducted his strange experiments there or if he kept many guards...

But what if Corvo had had to kill a lot of people tonight? Or perhaps he had seen something terrible... What if he felt close to collapsing, there in the warm tavern, under the tremendous weight upon his shoulders? Emily swallowed, and glanced away. She recalled all too clearly what Overseer Martin had told her.

Her heart beat unevenly. Emily took a slow breath, and sternly told herself to calm down. This time, she wouldn't ask Corvo questions that would make him think he had to comfort her. She would not stare anxiously at him. She'd think of something to do.

Ordinarily she might've dragged Corvo outside for a distraction, a game of hide and seek. But it was sheeting down icy rain. And she didn't want to risk seeing Sokolov, even from afar through a window, wherever they had put him.

Emily linked her hands in her lap. She looked down at them, considering. Useless hands, she had thought to herself a few times, hands that could play games and songs and flutter about, but not fight or cut off harsh men in parliament. 

And Corvo stood turned away from the room. Perhaps, even if he could have spoken, he would've preferred not to, and for everyone to pretend that he was just warming up his hands.

Emily understood that, at least. Maybe it was not unlike her lessons when she stumbled upon the pavilion again, and forced a bright smile onto her face and hoped that Callista would just carry on.

The prolonged silence, broken only by the mutters and clinks of glasses that came from the bar, seemed to sink through the blankness on Corvo's face. He looked up, then glanced around to where she sat.

Emily had a smile ready when their eyes met. She shrugged lightly, but said nothing, as if she'd just lost her place in the music and would be getting back to it in a moment.

She could not give Corvo the council he might have received from Admiral Havelock or someone else who had seen battle. She couldn't absolve him of his crimes the way Overseer Martin could've done, if Corvo had chosen to tell him. Emily's hands were very slim and small yet. But in the few tasks they could do, they were certainly nimble.

She turned another few pages, back to the start. She smoothed the sheet music, sat up straighter and pulled the stool a bit closer to the piano. 

There was something in Corvo's eyes, an undefinable trace left behind by whatever he had seen at Sokolov's house. He looked— honestly, he looked... shaken. 

And Emily didn't think she'd ever seen him look like that before. Maybe at the Golden Cat, when he'd taken off his mask, that wrenching relief as Emily had thrown herself into his arms, stumbling on legs that had fallen asleep as she'd sat on the floor and occasionally wept quietly into her folded arms.

In a childish, shivering part of herself, she was frightened. But she wouldn't show it. If Corvo was thinking of the bridge, or of Sokolov's experiments, then perhaps she might chase the thoughts away.

As far as she knew, he did not really have any favorite songs. Certainly not from her—Corvo had lived at court for so long, he had heard many more skilled pianists.

Emily had favorites, though, and she saw nothing wrong with just assuming that Corvo liked them too. Maybe that was presumptuous of her. But the dance was so exuberant and lively, she was sure that no one would be able to think of terrible things when it flowed through the room.

Emily took a breath and began to play. 

Her fingers moved quicker than they had before. This was not a practice session, this was a performance. She wanted it to be fast, the way it was supposed to be played. It was only then that the melody shone, that the seemingly mismatched pieces came together to form a whole.

The pedal made a clanging noise when Emily released it too fast. She frowned a bit, and the next few measures came out wobbly. Her hands fought to steady themselves along the road of the familiar melody. 

Then she regained her balance. The notes sprung into each other, almost but not quite tripping. Not perfect, not by a long shot, and still thinner and more anemic than the song was supposed to be, with her small hands unable to grasp the full chords.

To anyone else, Corvo might have appeared to just meditate upon the subject of his hands as he hovered them palms-down above the stove. But Emily kept glancing at him as often as she could afford, with the difficult transitions. There was something in his bowed head, in the light drop of his shoulders... 

He wasn't even looking her way. And yet he seemed to relax a little. It was as though he had just arrived fully in the pub, like some faraway part of him had joined them now, a part that had been standing frozen somewhere on Kaldwin's Bridge.

And there came the first crossing. Emily's hands shook just a bit, but she managed it well enough. The first chord of the next came out wobbly. She clicked her tongue in annoyance and thought she saw Corvo smile, just a little, from the corner of her eye.

The music notes passed before her eyes, yellowed with age but still readable. She played on, and the melody steadied again. Corvo did not seem to mind that her small fingers fumbled some of the trills. He warmed his hands above the stove and listened.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The door to Corvo's attic flew open with a bang. 
> 
> With two steps, Emily was inside, still panting from running up the stairs. After the crisp air in the stairwell, the heat of Corvo's room felt like walking into sunlight.
> 
> She launched herself at the bed. She took a few running steps, then jumped, and landed with a mattress-shaking crash at the foot of Corvo's bed, and cried, "A _party!_ "

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is probably my favorite chapter so far, it was a lot of fun to write. I hope you like it!

The door to Corvo's attic flew open with a bang. 

With two steps, Emily was inside, still panting from running up the stairs. After the crisp air in the stairwell, the heat of Corvo's room felt like walking into sunlight.

She launched herself at the bed. She took a few running steps, then jumped, and landed with a mattress-shaking crash at the foot of Corvo's bed, and cried, "A _party!_ "

Corvo jerked awake with a gasp. One of his big hands instantly went towards the edge of the mattress, where there was a bit of space between the rumpled sheets and the creaky metal frame.

Then he recognized her. He relaxed. But his gaze darted past her and skimmed the room at large. Perhaps he thought a City Watch guard had chased her up the stairs.

"A party!" she repeated. The mattress tilted under her weight as she bounced a little in her excitement. "Oh, Corvo, it's the most wonderful thing! You're going to the Boyles' masked ball!"

Corvo blinked slowly at her. His hair was tousled from sleep, his tunic rumpled. Emily had seen him sleepy before, but it never stopped being a bit funny, the way it took him a while to wake up all the way.

He nodded cautiously. His gaze flickered across her face the way it often did, when he seemed to want to read her thoughts.

He wasn't getting it. Emily wanted to shake him. How could he just sit there and not understand what she meant, when her chest felt fragile and light and she was so excited she had run all the way up to his room?

Grinning, and impatiently, she said "Don't you see? With this, I can help! I can come with you and _help!_ "

That woke Corvo up really fast. He almost flinched. His sharp, startled gaze was like a physical weight, suddenly dropping onto Emily's slim shoulders. His eyebrows rose, then fell into a frown, and Emily knew right away what he thought.

"It's going to be fine," she assured him. "You don't have to worry, really."

It was alright, she thought to herself—she had counted on that. Of course Corvo would object. But if she spoke fast and convinced him, he would agree. 

She only had to explain that she really _could_ do this. She wasn't just eager to go to the ball, she wanted to _help_. The idea had just come to her, like one of Mr. Joplin's genius thoughts that sparked new inventions. She was afloat on it, soaring with the relief of finally being able to do something.

"See, it's a masked ball, so no one will recognize me!" Emily said. She gave him a hopeful smile. "It'll be just like playing pretend, when we had tea parties at the Tower."

Something vague and pained flickered through Corvo's eyes. His frown softened a bit. Emily held her breath—was he giving in? Had the memory of how good she'd been at tea parties convinced him?

But then she saw the regret that came on the heels of that brief softening. Though Emily knew he could not say anything to interrupt, she talked louder anyway, drown out the words she could see so clearly in his dismayed gaze. 

"Let me come with you!" she insisted. "I can pretend I'm some country bumpkin and scout for you! I can ask the ladies all sorts of things and they'll just think I'm a silly child."

Corvo shook his head.

Something in the tight, fragile feeling in her chest cracked a little. Emily struggled to keep up her bright smile. This was only a small hitch in her plan. She had known Corvo would tell her no. She'd expected it, and she was prepared.

Because she had to convince him. She _had_ to. Of course it would take some work. She was only ten, and quite short, and Corvo knew that. He'd seen how altogether useless she'd been to the conspiracy, whiling the days away at the Hound Pits. 

But with this, she was equipped to help. She had to make him see that. This one was special, and he needed her. Corvo had been on so many dangerous errands. But this was the most perilous one yet.

A masked ball, where he would have to mingle with a crowd of bored, chainsmoking nobles in their finery. A masked, possibly drunk bunch in which he had to carefully filter out information. Where he would have to rely on the whims of the nobles and their idle conversation to find his target.

Corvo could not speak. He could not make small talk and pretend to be a clueless visiting aristocrat with no real idea of what his infamous mask meant. 

He could not inquire after the ladies Boyle. He could not respond when someone tried to engage him in idle chatter. And sooner or later, someone would notice his silence and they would _know._ His prowess in battle would not help him when Corvo's silence exposed him.

It was a rude thought, rude and hurtful, and Emily couldn't just _say_ that to him. She could never, ever say that. 

She was frightened—of course she was. It was going to be hard. She would have to walk among the people who were bowing and scraping to that blasted Lord Regent, and there would be Overseers with their noisy metal contraptions.

But it would've been worse to see Corvo's face fall as he realized that this time, she did not trust him to come back safely. 

So she just smiled, and tried to pretend that Corvo wasn't looking gravely at her, his answer so very clear in his eyes. "I'm sure we can find me a mask somewhere," Emily said. Her voice shook only a little bit. "And I can just wear anything from here, it won't even have to be tailored. It'll be terribly unfashionable but at least no one will recognize me."

She climbed off the bed. On second thought, she was lucky she had jumped in at the foot—she might've jumped in at the side and landed on that blade Corvo probably kept between the frame and the mattress.

A frown was drawing Corvo's eyebrows together. He looked torn between sympathy and sternness—or, well, how stern he could ever be. 

Perhaps it seemed unlikely to those who knew him only from the Tower's training grounds. But Corvo was not a very stern person at heart, nor a very strict one. Oh, he could be cross with her—but even when he was, he always had to brace himself for it, and he seemed relieved when the moment was over.

He shook his head at her again, slowly, almost regretful. "I'm going to ask Wallace for clothes," Emily said over her shoulder. "It'll work out, you'll see!"

She dashed out of the attic and down the stairs. Her footsteps echoed loudly, and she took some steps two at a time, a light hand on the railing for support.

A nagging sense of guilt rose at the back of her mind. It had been unfair to use Corvo's silence against him, pretend that she hadn't seen his obvious objection.

But Emily squashed the thought. This _would_ work out, she told herself. Corvo would see. Emily would make herself useful. Of course he was shocked that she wanted to put herself in danger. But eventually he had to see what a good idea she'd had. 

She would mingle with the ladies in his stead. She would peer out carefully from behind her mask and perhaps take a turn or two around the ballroom. Then she chat with the crowd. She would imitate her mother's politest laugh, and she would ferret information out of people, and she'd know within a heartbeat where Corvo had to go.

And Corvo would not have to move about in a house filled with guards and Overseers. Nobody, not even the chattiest, drunkest lady, would notice his silence. 

In this, at least, Emily could for once protect him. She would carry back what she found out and then he could move with purpose, not exposing himself to so many bored, curious nobles.

Downstairs, Emily had reason to question the soundness of mind of her loyalist conspirators. Because Lord Pendleton seemed just as flabbergasted as Corvo had, like her plan was the absolute last thing he'd expected her to propose.

He gaped at her for a moment. Then he said, "Surely not."

Emily huffed impatiently. "Surely _yes_ ," she retorted. "Go get Mr. Wallace and tell him I need a disguise. He's most informed about our wardrobes, I think."

With his mouth half open like that, Lord Pendleton really didn't bear much resemblance to his siblings. It cheered Emily to see it. Soon, she was sure, he would grasp her logic. It was simple, really—at a ball, an infamous man bound to silence was in more danger than ever before.

It was so grating to wait, though. And why was it that the adults' thoughts churned along so much slower than hers did, with how long it took everyone to grasp her meaning?

Emily bounced on her heels. She gave Lord Pendleton an encouraging smile. She felt brittle, and like she had gained great momentum, hurtling towards something, though what, she did not yet know. 

"Maybe Mr. Joplin can make me a mask like Corvo's," she said, conversationally. "I'll wear something dark, and it'll look like I'm dressing up as him!"

"My lady," said Lord Pendleton. He looked around helplessly. He seemed to hope for Ms. Curnow or the admiral to jump out from behind a bench and come to his aid. "That's quite... that's not... see, I'm sure everyone is delighted that you want to help, but..."

It turned out that Admiral Havelock, once he appeared from around a corner as though summoned, was also not catching on to Emily's idea. And he had no such inhibitions to mince his words. 

"My lady," he said, quite plainly, "that is absolutely out of the question."

Emily stopped talking. She'd just told him that she would put together a disguise and a mask, and that she might even put on a hat to hide her dark hair.

By now, Emily's smile felt strained. She would've very much liked to scowl. And she wanted to go find Ms. Curnow and demand if something was addling the brains of her loyalists. 

"You're quite right," she said steadily. "It wouldn't do to wear my clothes from the Tower, they might recognize them as too fine."

Havelock fixed her with a stern, steely look. It was really unlike Corvo's version, which always had banked warmth and even guilt behind it. 

Emily felt a sudden urge to take a step back. She would not, of course not—a future Empress didn't withdraw from a scowling old admiral. Though she couldn't help but quail a bit. It was not at all hard to believe that Havelock had commandeered ships in the military when he looked like that.

He said, "You're not going to the ball."

She was only ten, and her full height was not much to look at, next to the admiral's bulk. But she tried to stand tall anyway, and held her head high because it was all she had and she would _use_ it. 

Why in the Void did nobody _understand?_ Why did nobody see that she was the ideal candidate for this endeavor? Had they all noticed her nightmares, and how afraid she was of the dark, and that her ribs sometimes seemed to shrink until she could barely breathe?

Perhaps they simply thought her a scared little girl. Too young, too fragile and too _shaken_ by all that had transpired to be of any use. 

Emily shoved away the pinpricks of hurt. Well, she'd show them. She would prove them all wrong. 

"You misunderstand me," she said. She tried to speak slowly, get her point across better, like an adult disagreeing with another and not like a scolded child. "I'm not going for the ball, I don't care about the ball—" 

Which was not true, at least not entirely. She was frightened, yes, but she also cared a whole lot about the music and the ladies' finery and she hoped there would be actual dancing. 

But Havelock didn't need to know that. "—I'm coming along to _help_ ," Emily finished, confidently. "I'll be like a, a scout. I'll..."

She broke off. The admiral was shaking his head. He even looked a bit regretful.

"Why not?" Emily snapped, more loudly than was proper. "Do you not think I can do it? Look, I know I'm only ten and I'm not very tall. But I'm good at games. Corvo knows, he can tell you." 

She winced even as she said it. Another lie. If Corvo were to tell the admiral anything, in his spidery handwriting, it would just be a lengthy list of threats of what would happen to Havelock if he let Emily come along.

"Your eagerness does you honor, my lady," Havelock said. His tone was even and calm. "But it's absolutely—"

"I can climb," Emily talked over him. "And I can hide really well. I'm short, so I can hide anywhere!"

"Emily," Havelock said, for the first time forgetting himself. There was something unyielding in his voice. From the corner of her eye, Emily saw Lord Pendleton wince. "Stop this nonsense. There is no way you'll be of any use—"

"I'm _going_ ," Emily said loudly. The steely tone in Havelock's voice made her flinch on the inside like a small spooked cat, and her own cringing reaction only made her angrier. "I will be your Empress and I'm _going_. I will prepare myself and I'll go with Corvo and there's nothing you can do about it. Good day."

She marched off towards the stairwell. "My _lady_ ," Havelock growled from behind her, with such vehemence that she flinched and ducked her head.

But then she just waved her hand over her shoulder. She had done that at the Tower to send away handmaidens who'd been trailing too close. An airy, unconcerned motion, a high-born lady waving away a commoner like an annoying fly.

The admiral subsided. Perhaps he was struck speechless with rage at being dismissed like a servant. Emily had no desire to wait out his silence. She dashed into the stairwell. 

Her heart pounded quickly in her breast. For a moment her hearing sharpened almost painfully. But she heard no footsteps behind her, nobody following.

The stairwell was too dim, and something in her was still quivering like a plucked string. But she forced a little triumphant smile onto her lips. She had well and truly stunned the two men. 

She breathed a little easier. Again she took the steps two at a time, determinedly—she wouldn't let the adults sour her excitement. She'd just go to Wallace by herself. He would help her pick out clothing. And surely, when they saw how well she could disguise herself, they'd finally agree to let her go. She would show them that she could help, and Corvo would be safe.

* * *

Against the inky night sky, fireworks burst into brilliant colorful light.

The pops and clatter were muffled by the walls and rich draperies of the estate. But the lights shone brilliantly. Perhaps they shone all across Wrenhaven River, a defiant parade of bustling life in the middle of the dying city.

From inside, it wasn't hard to watch the undulating darkness in the trees. She was safe and warm in the well-lit hall. She felt quite sure that these shadows were far enough away. They would not spit up masked assassins.

Emily's face was so close to the window that her cheek felt chilled. Frost had grown on the panes of glass. The fragile tendrils stretched upwards like spindly reaching fingers.

She couldn't look away from the spectacle. It had been a long time since she'd seen fireworks. This hadn't been a time for parties, with the plague eating away at Dunwall.

Clouds of perfume drifted through the vast halls of the Boyle mansion. The chatter of the guests mingled with the clink of delicate glasses, tinkling polite laughs, the tap of expensive shoes upon the marble floor. 

Underneath it all played a small chamber orchestra. A calm and stately tune, not really intended for dancing, but for light conversation and mingling.

Then again, perhaps it was for the best. Though it would have been a lot of fun, dancing would have distracted her too much. Tonight, she had a work to do.

Emily turned. A skirt swirled richly around her knees and settled against her thighs with the gentle rustle of a petticoat.

She blinked down at the fabric in vague surprise. Somehow, she had not noticed it until now. It seemed to her that just a moment ago she hadn't been feeling its weight.

Beyond the hall, the corridor was wide and empty. Glittering confetti trailed from the ceiling. Outside, the fireworks kept popping and exploding, spitting licks of flame into the dark star-less night. 

Emily could hear chatter and laughter. But the party guests were strangely out of sight. No one traversed the hallway. Perhaps the guests had all reached that stage of a gathering where they did nothing but circle slowly around the rooms, methodically exchanging gossip like a slow sharing of treats.

It was for the better, Emily decided. In the deserted corridor, she had more time to check up on her disguise. 

She halted in front of a long gilded mirror. Her hair had been woven into a half-hearted crown braid—it was too short for the style. Emily could see oil glistening on it where someone, perhaps Ms. Curnow, had smoothed down the flyaway strands. 

The skirt was old-fashioned and a drab dark green color, with crocheted embroidery at the hem. The petticoat pressed heavily against her underclothes. Emily sighed, and pulled a face at herself in the mirror. It wasn't a very flattering outfit. She looked like an aged matron in the skirt, so very _ordinary_.

But it would do. At least she had a mask to hide her face.

It was a simple affair. A few feathers had been pinned to the top, to make it look more fancy than it really was. The glued-on jewels around her nose looked too shiny. They were probably just painted metal.

The mask was green, like her skirt. Wallace had been careful to select a shade that fit her clothes. Green did not suit Emily—her governess had always said it made her look faded and ill. 

The mask was a bit too big for her face. Its shadow covered her eyes. In the mirror, it almost looked like there were no eyes beyond the mask at all, just empty sockets, or...

Or black eyes. Completely black, like something half-remembered from a dream. Something eerie and unsettling. Where had she seen eyes like those before?

She shook her head to dispel the thought. Now was not the time to dwell on _dreams_ , of all things. She might've been only ten years old, but she had promised herself she would show them all that she could focus when she had to. 

The feathers at the top bounced lightly as she plucked at the mask again. She looked nothing like the heiress to the Empire of the Isles. Satisfied, Emily adjusted her skirt and went into a room.

Large, frost-covered windows looked out at the darkened gardens. A fire crackled in the hearth. Groups of people stood around and chatted in hushed tones. Portraits looked down at the assembly with haughty eyes. The rich oil paint glistened slightly in the light.

The others hadn't wanted her help. They hadn't thought she could be of any use. Emily took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. But now she was here, against all odds, and she would do this. She would play her role, ask around, mingle with the nobles. 

She sidled up to a tall, skinny man with a monocle. She smiled brightly. A little girl, she thought, she was nothing more than a naive girl gushing over the courtly fashions on display at the party. 

"The ladies Boyle are _so_ well-dressed tonight," she said, excitedly. "How that little guessing game of theirs going, do you know?"

The man didn't reply. He was looking up at a portrait of some fellow with a truly magnificent mustache. Emily looked up at the portrait too, and gaped a little bit as though she were impressed with the art.

"Such a clever game," Emily mused. "I wonder who's wearing the white, she looks so lovely. I heard Waverly, the youngest, is in red..."

Behind her mask, Emily allowed herself a small smirk. That had been masterfully done. It had sounded like any other trivial party conversation. And she had created the perfect opening for the man to carelessly drop some information into her small, waiting hands...

But the man said nothing. He held an unlit cigar and stared up at the painting as though he had never seen anything like it before. Or perhaps he was debating the merits of smoking—enraging their hostesses versus the relief from boredom and ennui that a cigar would bring. 

He had been staring for quite some time. Emily frowned at the man. Something just seemed off. He wasn't looking around for someone to scold for letting a child speak to him. He had not turned away. He was...

The man was frozen. 

For a moment Emily thought it was her eyes that were wrong. She blinked slowly, then pressed them shut til she saw tiny lights dancing in the glowing dark behind her eyelids. Perhaps the ladies' mingled perfumes had gone to her head.

But when she looked back up at him, the man was stiff and still. His hand holding the unlit cigar did not tremble or fidget. He did not even blink.

Emily stumbled back. She couldn't look away from the man's face, his unblinking eyes, the wrinkled cheeks that might as well have been carved from marble. 

The mask restricted her vision. The eye holes seemed to narrow until all she could see was the horrible stillness in the man's posture, and with a gasp, she flung the mask away. It clattered to the floor at her feet.

She stepped on the hem of the skirt and bumped into a low table. Emily stumbled to the side, struggling to avoid the vase she was about to send toppling. But her flailing arm caught against the porcelain, and she winced, almost hearing it shatter...

Except it did not move. The impact felt like iron against her wrist. 

Emily reached out a trembling hand, and poked the vase. It did not move. It might as well have been carved of marble or glued to the table.

Her breath was coming too fast. Emily knew this, was distantly aware of it, and yet could not stop it. The air rasped wetly in her throat, stale with smoke from the fire and perfumes and colognes from the guests.

And none of them were moving. Emily turned a slow circle. Her skirt brushed her calves, the weight of the petticoat a snug warmth around her knees. 

She saw ladies wearing jeweled clothes, their weary husbands with glasses of cider half-raised to their lips. The adornments on their masks glittered in the firelight. By the corner, a few women were laughing, heads thrown back, hands half-raised. 

They were all frozen.

Even the fire had stopped flickering, Emily saw, as she walked slowly, numbly through the room. The flames were arrested in the middle of sending sparks up the chimney. It didn't even radiate warmth.

In the hallway, the golden confetti now hung suspended in the air. The scraps of paper turned slowly end over end, as though caught by an eerie unseen breeze. They floated soundlessly in the fogged-up window of time that had appeared in the mansion.

"Hello?" Emily said to one of the servants who carried a tray, her face stuck in a courteous little half smile.

Her voice came out high and breathless. The servant didn't react.

For a while, Emily stood in a corner under the confetti. A part of her crown braid was unraveling in the back, from her shaking and her hasty movements through the silent crowd. Her mask lay forgotten somewhere in that dreadful room.

But if nobody was reacting to her presence, it did not matter that her face was exposed. Emily had both hands pressed to her chest. Under the gnarled mass of jumping muscles in her breast, it was a struggle to feel the movement of her lungs.

She breathed jerkily in and out until her hands unclenched a little. Then she tucked back her errant hair as best as she could ear and walked on.

She went past an Overseer with one of his strange metal devices. As frightened as she was, she was faintly glad that he wasn't moving. 

She hated those machines. As a child, she had thought they were giant audiograph players, until she had heard one once, at some ceremony at the Abbey. 

The memory was very fuzzy. She'd been about four, and she'd been inconsolable, crying loudly into her mother's blouse until a wet patch had grown there. Jessamine had excused herself and gone out into a small courtyard. Emily had never found out if there'd been repercussions afterward, whispers in court about how brazenly inappropriate it was for a child to be crying in the Abbey, or for the mother, the _Empress_ , to break protocol and leave a ceremony.

She remembered the cool air on her face, the leafless trees reaching their branches up into a slate gray sky. She remembered her mother's soft fingers carding through her hair, the vibration of her voice as she hummed a little song into Emily's poor, abused ears.

She remembered Corvo standing close. When Emily's wails had died down to teary sniffles and she'd finally pulled her head up from her mother's shoulder, she'd seen the relieved look they had exchanged. 

Then Corvo had given her one of his cufflinks to play with. It had been her fascination for the rest of the day, a shiny and intricately carved thing that clinked when she rolled it in her little hand.

Emily darted past the Overseer and his device. The skin on the back of her neck crawled with nerves. But this man didn't notice her either. He stared sightlessly at the far wall.

And there was the door, past the buffet. The table had made her mouth water earlier, food so fine and far removed from the Hound Pits Pub's meagerly stocked kitchen. Now, she did not even look at it.

Emily let out a little gasp of relief. She would just leave. Even the shadows outside would be easier to bear than this. She would run out into the garden and perhaps she could find Corvo and Mr. Beechworth somewhere in the canals that ran through the district.

The door knob didn't want to turn in Emily's sweaty grip. She had to use both hands to force the cold metal into motion. Even then, the door groaned and creaked as it opened, the hinges and the very wood itself protesting the movement.

Beyond the door was a fragmented nothing.

Emily stumbled, caught herself against the wooden frame. She let out a little cry of dismay.

There should have been a grassy field, decorative hedges. Trees that had lost their leaves, and firs that stood proud and full in the wintry air. Instead, it was as though a giant had taken the garden and torn it apart, smashed it to pieces under big fists in his rage.

A small parcel of lawn was slowly drifting along in front of her. The cobblestone walkway had broken up, shattered, a couple of flagstones tumbling end over end in the air.

Beyond the fragments was a deep, blue void. No faraway lights shone out at her, no spires and towers loomed large on the city's horizon. It was like a sea of nothingness, with unseen waves breaking apart the Boyles' garden.

The fireworks were nowhere to be seen. Emily didn't recall hearing them stop.

She looked around, at the huge clumps of earth with tattered, half-frozen rose bushes and hedges damp with wintry dew. Her heart pounded so hard that she thought it would burst from her chest and toss itself down into the endless blueish chute of nothingness that yawned up at her. 

When she looked up, she saw a whale floating past high, high above. It looked bigger than the whales she'd seen sometimes, being brought in by the trawlers along the river with their hoarse sirens.

Its movement was majestic and slow. She could see pale markings on its vulnerable belly, its great tail fin waving gently. 

It took her a moment to realize it was only being moved, not moving. It was floating, the fin stirring in some unseen current. It was dead.

Getting onto the first clump of earth was harder than she'd thought. For a second Emily teetered, suspended between the security of the doorway and the island of stone and lawn. 

Then she tipped over and fell to her knees in the grass. She clutched at the cobblestone with her bare hands. Her pulse beat relentlessly in her throat and belly.

The little island didn't move under her weight. That, at least, was reassuring. 

Silence pressed on her ears as she moved through what had once been a garden. She went from fragment to fragment. Her skirts kept getting stuck on the brambles and branches of frozen bushes. She had to yank them loose more than once. Her breath fanned out into cold condensation in front of her face. Before long, she was chilled through her skirts. The Boyle manor had become a distant and oddly tilting twinkle of lights far behind.

She found the black-eyed man on an island with a tree on it, whose roots poked out of the ground like it had been ripped up by that giant's hand.

He had been waiting for her. He looked on as she stumbled onto his patch of lawn, arms folded, somehow unforgiving. 

Emily dusted off the knees of her skirt. Little flecks of frost dropped off. The frozen grass crunched under her feet.

For a moment they just looked at each other. Emily folded her arms across her chest to mirror him. It made her feel a bit less like she was about to be scolded. 

She said, "The ladies Boyle are going to call the City Watch on you for blowing up their garden."

The man did not smile. And suddenly, Emily remembered where she had seen him before. He had visited her in a dream by the riverside, that night when she and Callista had gone to check on Corvo.

Did that mean this was a dream too? Emily looked around. It would certainly make sense. Because none of _this_ made sense, the broken ground and the torn-apart garden. The blue nothingness around, and a _whale_ , of all things, belly-down but quite dead.

The man stared down at her. "My lady," he said, softly. "An empire is being turned on its head in your honor, and yet you would stomp your foot like an unruly child and insist to play a part?"

"What?" Emily said. Then she frowned. "I _am_ a child, though I'll thank you not to call me unruly."

He shook his head, just a little twitch, oddly bird-like. "Your role is to remain in safety," he said. 

He looked impatient, his mouth pinched and severe. Emily was being measured, she knew—measured, and found wanting. His voice was still soft. But it echoed a bit, like a great and ancient power was rolling along under his words. Not like Admiral Havelock with his bluster and bravado.

Somehow, as was the way with dreams, Emily knew what he was talking about. He was speaking of the Boyle manor, and of her plan to scout ahead for Corvo.

And of course he wasn't getting it either. Emily sighed to herself. She wished that she had stayed up on the other island, because that one floated slightly higher and she could've been looking down at the man.

She squared her shoulders. Very well, she would explain this _again_ , though she still felt cross with the adults for not making the obvious connection.

Inane chatter was just part of a ball. Emily knew, she'd been to a lot of them with her mother. And always there'd been an incessant buzz of conversation around, even the most bored-looking elderly men engaging in conversation.

Why did none but her realize how much _danger_ Corvo would be in? Why wouldn't they let her help? Why did nobody understand the concept of play-acting and that Emily was good at it?

"See, someone has to help Corvo," she began, quite patiently.

The black-eyed man cut her off. "You do not seem to understand this."

A small line of irritation had formed between his brows. But his eyes seemed curious more than angry, like she was some misbehaving experiment, akin to Sokolov's strange bubbling concoctions. 

"Many of these plans and schemes depend on your compliance," he said. "You must play exactly the part you were assigned, and that is the part of the trump card hidden in the player's sleeve until the perfect moment of revelation has been found."

Emily frowned. "I'm not a card, I'm an Empress. Or at least I'm going to be." Again she drew herself up to her full, though unimpressive, height. Once she was tall, perhaps she wouldn't be having so many arguments with her subjects anymore. "I want to help. I'm _going_ to help. I'm not afraid and you can't stop me."

She even felt a bit grand and brave as she said it. But her heart, her treacherous, tripping heart, thumped a little harder at her own lie. 

Part of it was true. She did want to help. The thought of letting Corvo go alone—it made her chest clench up like a big fist was squeezing her. It was just not possible. She _couldn't_ let Corvo go alone.

But the truth was that she was frightened. Oh, she was so very frightened. The loyalists were getting so close to the end of their scheming—but for her, the end could not come soon enough. She wanted to go back to the Tower, to her toys and tutors.

She wanted Corvo not to die at the Boyle manor as somebody attempted to talk to him, received no reply, and alerted the guards. And if that meant donning a mask and assuming the part of the innocent country bumpkin for a night, to gather information, then she would do that.

"—it's not as though it really matters." 

The man was still talking. Emily shook herself. He had his head cocked to the side again. For the first time Emily noticed that a strange black fog seemed to roll out beneath the hems of his heavy coat. Perhaps he was daring to smoke because he thought the Boyles' rules didn't apply to their gardens.

"It would be entertaining to watch the loyalist conspiracy falter now. And on account of the girl they're trying to protect." Black, fathomless eyes stared at her, unblinking. He was smiling, just a little bit, in a strange manner that Emily didn't like. "Then again, it appears I have bestowed my favor on your lot... I've invested something, you could say, since Corvo bears my mark."

"No, he doesn't," Emily said, suspiciously. Corvo wouldn't converse with a man who spoke in riddles and _smirked_ at him, much less carry anything of his. "What mark?"

The man's mouth curled in a condescending, amused smile. "You haven't noticed?" he said. "It's true that you're one of those who choose not to see what is in plain sight."

Emily said nothing. She just stared warily at him, and wondered if it was too late to jump back up on the other island and make a run for it.

"Tell me, little Empress." He leaned a bit closer. "Have you never wondered how Corvo has navigated the wild waters of this conspiracy all along?"

"He's really good at fighting," Emily offered. She took a careful step back. The fog swirled around the man like a living cloud. It didn't smell like cigar smoke. It smelled of the sea.

"Of course he is," said the man. He smiled again. It didn't make him look any nicer than the first one had. "But did you not think that he made a pact to harness an unknown power, when he has so much riding on the success of this whole enterprise?"

Emily opened her mouth, then closed it. Pact? Power? What was the man even talking about? Her head spun a bit, and the black haze seemed to rush at her, billowing with treacherous gentleness around her face.

In a daze, Emily looked around. There was nothing but blue around them, fragmented trees and islands of shattered flagstones. The whale still floated past; it had made its way nearly back to the Boyle manor, a collection of twinkling lights.

Suddenly she felt almost drowsy, dizzied by this strange fissure in time and space. How had this even happened? How had she gotten here?

She'd only meant to spy on the nobles for Corvo. Her task had been clear: she'd set out to uncover which Lady Boyle was wearing which outfit so she could report back to him. 

Then somehow, the garden had become destroyed without a sound outside, and inside, everything was frozen, suspended in time.

And now this stranger seemed to... to know so much about the loyalists and their endeavors. When Emily blinked, some of the haze fell away. A sharp stab of alarm went through her. The man was not carrying any weapons she could see. But that didn't have to mean much, she knew how Corvo could appear unarmed and yet be bristling with knives under his coat. 

The man's coat was dark, that much was true. But he bore no insignias, neither of the City Watch nor the Overseers.

Then how did he know them?

And why were his eyes so black?

"You..." Emily cleared her suddenly dry throat. "What do you know?" she said, shakily. She'd meant to sound commanding, an Empress demanding an answer from a lowly commoner. "About the conspiracy. Tell me, right now. How do you know about us?"

The man only smiled. This time, it looked almost kind. The fog wafted around his face and shoulders, stirred by an unseen breeze. "Corvo's role," he said, slowly, "is to stand at your right hand and protect you to his death."

He leaned close, as though to share a secret. Each word seemed carefully chosen. His eyes were so black that they seemed to draw the light from Emily's vision.

The man said, "Perhaps you should chance a look at his left."


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With a startled gasp, Emily woke.
> 
> Her body had jerked upright almost before her eyes opened. The sheets had pooled around her waist, a rumpled mass of fabric. She stared dumbly at the opposite wall, the peeling plaster and the cobwebs. 
> 
> For a moment, she had no idea where she was. Then it came rushing back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Sorry about the delay! It was about 11pm when I remembered I'd been supposed to update last night--I try to update every 3 days--and by that point my head was like "how do brain?" so I thought it'd be best to sleep first.)
> 
> Okay, I lied, I think this chapter is my favorite. I've also realized I could as well just have written 6 drabbles in which Emily gets a hug and it would've amounted to the same thing. xD We're almost at the end! An epilogue after this, I think, and then this fic is done. I'll be sorry to see it finished, tbh, I've grown really fond of it.
> 
> Now grab a cup of tea (or coffee, or your beverage of choice) and hopefully enjoy this chapter. :)

With a startled gasp, Emily woke.

Her body had jerked upright almost before her eyes opened. The sheets had pooled around her waist, a rumpled mass of fabric. She stared dumbly at the opposite wall, the peeling plaster and the cobwebs. 

For a moment, she had no idea where she was. Then it came rushing back. 

Pale morning light streamed in through the windows. Callista had left one slightly open, and wind stirred the dust on the table and the small pile of Emily's drawings. From somewhere below, she could already hear the muted screech of Mr. Joplin's machines.

Emily rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. Her hair was a mess, she could feel it even without touching it. She felt like she had slept for an age, and yet not quite enough. And what a strange dream she'd had. 

She dug around under her pillow for the bone-thing. Perhaps it was messing with her sleep. 

It was almost warm in her grasp. The little spindly appendages were smooth in her palms, the white bits polished by river water and sand. Only the weathered leather ties betrayed its age. They had gone crumbly and rough. 

The thing felt a bit like it vibrated—a fine tremor that seemed to settle in the palm of her hands. The bigger one, she had given to Corvo. She had found two, and that had seemed only logical. Corvo was older than her, taller, and he had more important things to do than remembering dinner etiquette or adding sums. If a bone-thing were to bring him luck, he'd need a bigger one.

The dream was not forgotten, later, when Emily drank down her usual portion of Mr. Joplin's remedy with a grimace after breakfast. But it faded into the background. More important seemed the matter of sorting out her costume.

She wondered, as she peered through the bar into the kitchen, if the dream had been some kind of premonition. At least it had given her a good idea: she would have to wear a skirt. 

Women rarely wore skirts anymore—they were seen as the remnant from a less industrialized time. And no one would suspect the future Empress to strut around at a masked ball in one of those unwieldy things.

The Hound Pits were awake around her. The tinny talking noise of an audiograph drifted down from the first floor as she stepped into the stairwell. She walked up the stairs, and timed her steps to the metallic scratching noise of someone scrubbing the sinks in the bathroom. 

She kept her eyes on her feet. Her shoes were a bit scuffed from wear. If she didn't look at the shadows, she could maybe walk past them like a normal person, and not run like her legs wanted to. But on the first floor landing, she nearly bumped into Ms. Curnow.

"Good morning, have you seen Wallace?" Emily said, distracted.

Callista's face looked pinched and wary. She tried to smile when she steadied Emily by the elbow, but it didn't quite reach her eyes.

Instead of answering, Callista said, "Emily, come sit with me." 

Emily stilled. That had sounded almost like an order. 

She frowned up at her teacher. It was one thing not to curtsy at her all the time. But it was an entirely different matter to give commands to your future monarch. A whole other level of rudeness, it was, and her old governess would've gone into transports over it.

And that had been a strange tone, somewhere between placating and— pitying? But Callista's face betrayed nothing, beyond a polite head-tilt into the direction of the hallway.

A minute later, as they sat in the admiral's room—somewhat inexplicably, Emily thought with a frown, because why would they not just go back downstairs—Ms. Curnow folded her hands in her lap and said, "Now, I understand that you want to help."

Emily looked around the room with interest. She swung her feet under the chair; it was too high, her shoes didn't reach the floor. She had never been in the admiral's room before. It was a very nice chamber, much nicer than hers in the near-demolished tower. There were certainly no cobwebs.

She pursed her lips. Shouldn't the future Empress have had the nicest rooms on the premises? But then again, the pub did belong to Havelock. And the admiral had done so much for their cause. So perhaps it was fair that he had a big room.

"—and that's great, really," Callista was saying, earnestly. Emily blinked. Right, she'd said she wanted to talk. She sat up a bit straighter. "You're worried about Corvo, that's understandable."

Emily scoffed. This again, she thought. Why was everyone going on about that? "Corvo can take care of himself," she said. And he _could_ —just not in this. With this, he would need help, and she would gladly lend him her voice and her most charming smiles. "He's been Lord Protector for a while, remember?"

"Of course," Callista said agreeably. If she'd heard the little tremor under Emily's words, she was courteous enough to ignore it. "But anything with the fortitude to harm Corvo would most certainly have no qualms about going through you first."

Emily waved a careless hand. She knew that, she did. It wasn't like she was going to go in and fire Corvo's huge, unwieldy pistol at the nearest Overseer. 

She glanced at the door. Perhaps Wallace was in his lord's room just next door. She didn't know if he could sew. But if her costume needed adjusting, they could always ask Ms. Lydia.

"You're not going," Callista said. "Emily, you're not."

That recaptured Emily's attention. Callista sat across from her, hands folded demurely in her lap, straight-backed. She had braced herself, Emily realized. That was what her strange smile on the stairs had been about. She had prepared herself to say this.

For a moment it was all Emily could do to gape at her. "Yes, I am," she said.

Slowly, Callista shook her head. "No. You aren't."

The reeling, fragile feeling in her chest was back, like something in there was trembling on the edge of a great precipice. 

Irritation was bubbling up now, too. The adults were all so _dense_ and she didn't have time for this, she needed to sort out her clothes and prepare, perhaps practice her blandest smile in a mirror...

Callista just looked at her, with something sympathetic and almost despairing in her eyes. It was the same look that Callista wore whenever Emily mentioned her mother. To see it now, as she was preparing to save Corvo, prodded at her pride, stirred up a bit of anger.

With as much patience as she could muster, Emily said, "Believe me, I can _help_."

She glanced around. Save for them, the admiral's bedchamber was empty. The scrubbing in the bathroom was still going on. It would cover their conversation from the nosy ears of anyone listening from the hallway. 

For now, Emily was relieved they were not downstairs. She was grateful for the privacy. She leaned forward, and near-whispered, "Corvo doesn't speak."

Obviously, Callista knew that. But perhaps she needed a reminder. She wouldn't put it past her—the adults had been so slow lately.

But her tutor did not look surprised. There was no dawning understanding in her eyes either. She just gazed at Emily expectantly.

Emily huffed. Honestly, did she have to explain every little detail? "So how will he find out which of the ladies he's looking for?" she said pragmatically. "And they'll recognize him by his silence."

Callista opened her mouth, then hesitated. She seemed to chose her words carefully, watching closely for the effect of each one. 

"Emily, I assure you, Corvo is very good at this," she said. "At finding hidden clues and putting them together. He's very skilled in the art of reconnaissance, voiceless or no."

Really, what was it with people questioning her trust in her Lord Protector? It was... well, it was somewhat justified, Emily realized, with a guilty jolt. She did not believe that Corvo could do this alone. But she still _trusted_ him. She was just so worried.

Emily swung her feet under her chair. The soles of her shoes did not touch the floor, though she would very much have liked something to dig her toes into just then, in her agitation. "But what if someone—" 

Her throat closed. Emily swallowed hard against the obstruction. "What if someone tries to talk to him and he can't answer?"

Callista _smiled_ , of all things. "Emily, you've known Corvo for all your life and he's your friend. But I don't think Corvo has to worry about being approached by anyone. You see, he cuts quite an intimidating figure."

 _Intimidating._ Emily tried to snort in derision, and it came out sounding much too choked. That was about the most ridiculous thing she'd ever heard. 

Corvo was not intimidating. He was tall, and he was a formidable fighter. But he had solemnly accepted every colorful drawing she'd made for him, he'd let her pull on his hair with her chubby hands when she'd been very small. He was not _intimidating_ , he was... he was...

Emily's thoughts spun, an unsteady drunk tumble of fear. Perhaps— perhaps it would not even need direct conversation. There were so many ways for Corvo to be exposed at that party. All it would take was some half-drunk lady bumping into him and giggling an apology, and receiving no answer. 

Corvo was always so courteous and careful. Nobody would ever just think him rude. Corvo was a gentleman, it was in every ounce of his bearing. Even people who did not know him recognized that. 

The lady would realize that his silence was enforced, not chosen. And her thoughts, wine-addled though they were, would jump straight to the late Empress' Lord Protector.

Then they'd call for the Overseers. Corvo would try to fight back. But he'd be mindful not to hurt any of the civilians standing by, and his own caution would impede him, slow him down. 

The Overseers would blast their horrible noise at him. The City Watch would arrest him. And this time there would be nobody to break him out of prison and stay the executioner's axe.

Her thoughts were silenced, all at once in a ringing hush, when Callista leaned close and took her hands.

Emily hadn't even noticed that she had clenched her own in her lap. Her fingernails dug into her palms. Under Callista's warm touch, her knuckles felt clammy and cold. And her heart wasn't working right. It was pushing hard against her lungs, swollen and racing.

"Emily," Callista said, gently. "You can't underestimate your own role in this. You are... important."

Emily gasped at that, a little pained noise, and sniffed back the sting in her eyes. She glared as best as she could. " _Corvo_ is important too!"

"Of course he is." Callista squeezed her hands. "But you're... Emily, don't you see? You're going to be Empress. This whole conspiracy hinges on you. If we lose you, we lose everything, and all will have been for naught."

Callista looked almost distressed. She stroked her thumbs over the backs of Emily's hands. There was a tremor running through her bones, nearly too faint to be felt, but present.

It unsettled Emily more than Callista's insistent eyes. She didn't think she'd ever felt her hands shake before. "Well, if, if Corvo—," she choked on the word. She couldn't say it. "If something h-happens to him at this stupid ball, I'll _refuse_ to be your Empress." 

Regret flickered across Callista's face. Her hold tightened, but she said nothing. 

"Did you not hear me?" Emily said loudly. Her voice cracked. "I'll go on a whaling ship and travel, and I'll never come back."

At last, Callista released her hands. Emily's own were shaking too, she noticed, and why in the Void would her tutor's hands be trembling, when she was the one being so infuriatingly obstinate?

She looked up at Callista in a strange daze. Her blood made quite a lot of noise, rushing through her ears like that. In just a moment, Emily was going to lose her temper, oh, she was. She would curse at her tutor until her voice gave out. She would _order_ Mr. Beechworth to take her along.

"Corvo won't let you risk your life over this," Callista said. "Emily. You cannot go."

This time, Emily hardly noticed the shadows in the stairwell at all. Apparently blinding fury was a good way to circumvent the creeping fear that always overtook her whenever she saw the squirming darkness.

She stomped upstairs. She didn't even try to be quiet. Corvo should hear her, she didn't care. Maybe if he heard her, he'd have enough time to think of some excuse to make up to placate her.

True enough, when Emily stormed into the attic, Corvo was waiting for her. He sat on the foot of his bed, elbows braced on his knees, like a man awaiting trial. He looked solemn, a little pained.

It did nothing to diffuse her rage. Emily kicked at the floor, a dull thunk that hurt her toes. She shouted, " _Why not?_ "

And that really was quite loud. Emily flinched, startled despite herself. A near-shriek had escaped her, in a voice that did not sound like her own. 

Of course she had yelled at Corvo before. But that had always been about stupid toddler stuff, like when he'd refused to help her sneak out of her room after bedtime. And then her mother had always been there too, ready to scold Emily that that volume and tone were not acceptable.

Now, her mother was dead. There was no one to reprimand her. And it was on Corvo to make her stop shouting, and by the Void, if he wanted that, he would have to agree to let her come with him and _help._

"I can do it!" Emily insisted. "Do you think I can't? I know I've been—" 

She paused, and then waved her hands aimlessly. Because what _had_ she been, exactly? She was only ten and there were so many things that she couldn't understand, big and frightening things like Overseer Martin's serious gaze across the lunch table.

But she had been trying so hard. She hadn't even cried in days. She still ran through shadows, but she'd hoped nobody had noticed that. Every morning she drank Mr. Joplin's remedy.

" _Difficult!_ " Emily finally blurted out, although she didn't think she had been, not really. Alright, she'd been a bit bratty to Callista a few times. "I'm young but I can still help!" 

Corvo let out a small sigh. He glanced away for a moment, at the floor between them, visibly gathering his thoughts. When he looked back up at her, a new resolve was written on his features.

Emily gritted her teeth. This hurt more than she had thought it would, the solemn conviction in his eyes. When it had been Admiral Havelock, or even Lord Pendleton and his hapless disbelief, it had stung only a bit, like an abrasion from falling down at a run and skidding across gravel.

But this was _Corvo_. He had been by her mother's side for so long. Of course he was familiar with Emily's weaknesses—there was no need to pretend he hadn't noticed how small her hands were, how very inept at holding the unwieldy tasks that would soon be dropped into them.

But he had to know her strengths, too. He knew how tenacious she was, how adept she could be at imitating courtly chatter if she put her mind to it. Had she done something here at the Hound Pits to sour his opinion? Did Corvo truly think so little of her now? 

Furious hurt welled up in her throat. For a moment it choked her, a dangerously volatile lump. She was going to _throw_ something at Corvo, perhaps one of the oil lamps or a log of wood from the stove. 

But he was just looking at her, his hands dangling loosely between his knees, his mouth a little pinched and tight, but otherwise unmoving.

She knew Corvo did not speak. She _knew_ that. And yet, Emily found herself raising her voice anyway, talking over him even though he would not be objecting out loud.

"I'm good at playing pretend," she insisted. "I don't know how to shoot someone—," and oh, Corvo almost flinched at that, like it hurt him to hear her speak of it so casually, "and I don't know how to sneak past guards. But I can play games, and I can hide in small spaces..." 

The little lines around Corvo's eyes seemed to deepen. Slowly, he shook his head.

"I'll wear a mask," Emily said loudly. "It'll be fine! Nobody will recognize me! And then you—"

Corvo pressed his lips together. Emily could almost see how he was holding himself in place. He looked to be near vibrating with tension. In his customary silence, he watched her, patient, waiting for her to finish. 

Her heartbeat pounded loudly in her ears. He was just— he was just _sitting_ there, he had his answer ready and he was just letting Emily's anger wash past him like useless chatter. She would not have it. She would not be treated with patience like a child throwing a tantrum.

There was a heated knot in her throat. Emily struggled to swallow it away. She wanted to press her point, in the calm, orderly manner of a judge at court. She had to convince Corvo that utilizing her as a spy, a scout, was the most sensible course of action. She couldn't do that if she was on the verge of tears.

"You won't have to go in," she snapped. Her voice shook. "You won't have to mingle. It won't be so dangerous for you, and— _stop shaking your head!_ "

This time, Emily's voice really did echo. Perhaps even Callista, downstairs in Havelock's room with that sympathetic guilty look on her face, had heard her.

Corvo opened his mouth, then closed it. The sight gave Emily pause, even with the furious tears that had begun as a salty burn in her sinuses. Corvo _never_ forgot himself. Emily had only rarely seen him forget he could not speak and draw in a breath anyway.

For a moment they simply stared at each other. Emily's breaths came wet and rasping. She wanted badly to kick the floor again, or better yet, one of the solid beams of wood that held up the ceiling. Or perhaps Corvo's shin, although she had the nagging feeling she would regret that later.

Corvo still looked pained. Frustrated, his lips pressed into a thin line. It was times like these that Emily wondered— _after_ the fact, when she wasn't so _livid_ with him and his refusal to budge even an inch—if Corvo ever got angry at his lack of a voice.

And suddenly, with a choking, fresh wave of grief, Emily realized that she could not argue with him properly.

There was simply no way for them to create the rapid back-and-forth of two people at odds with each other. No matter how much she bristled, Corvo could not raise his voice back at her to scold her like an unruly child.

She could not tell him that it hurt her to be doubted by him. She couldn't convince him properly, because she could not hear his objections. 

She had fought only with her mother. Oh, how they had fought, especially recently, as Emily had started insisting that she wanted to go on a whale ship. Jessamine had had the absolutely infuriating habit of talking over Emily as if she weren't speaking. Emily had yelled at her mother in turn.

They had exchanged heated looks and sharper words, and there was just no way to do that with Corvo.

Corvo couldn't argue with her. He was tall and warm and kind and such a formidable fighter, but none of that would serve him at the Boyle manor. 

He would be _recognized_. Even his sword and the intricate mechanics of his crossbow wouldn't be enough to get him out of a building filled with enraged guards and Overseers.

And Emily did not want to say that, she never, never wanted to hurt him. But she had to cover for his silence, just this time.

Emily let out a shuddery breath. Her ribs seemed to cave in, collapsing and compressing her lungs. She no longer felt angry, she realized, in a distant sort of way. Just small and frightened.

"Please," she said. Her voice was choked with tears, because it appeared that she had no way to hold them back anymore. "Corvo. Don't you see? They'll recognize you. If you try to t-talk to them. They'll..."

She trailed off. But Corvo just blinked. He didn't look hurt, or offended, or much of anything really, except surprised. 

Emily was helpless to stop herself from cringing, just a bit, as she waited. Surely it would take Corvo only a moment to catch up. Perhaps this slight was thoroughly unexpected because it came from her, and that made it hurt all the more.

Corvo held up a hand in a universal gesture to wait. He did not seem to realize she had just insulted him. For all that he heard even unsaid things sometimes, he hadn't seen her tumbling thoughts just now.

Emily sniffled, but stared at him warily. Corvo got up from his perch on the foot of his bed and went to the desk, and when he opened one of the creaky drawers she knew what he would do.

She waited. Her nose was starting to run, and she wiped it impatiently with her sleeve. Her breathing felt loud and uneven, like someone was holding her head under water and her ears had become attuned to the loudness of her own body. 

The gleaming end of the pen bobbed slightly as Corvo wrote. He seemed to be trying to hurry, and yet hesitated a few times over the right words.

Back at the Tower, she had often wondered if it was easier or harder, taking the time to write things down. On the heels of that thought had always followed guilt, because she had no doubt that Corvo would've much, much preferred to be able to speak to her just now, soothing words or counter-arguments as he saw fit.

Emily stood still and waited. From here, she could see the way Corvo's fingers cramped around the pen, struggling to even out his chicken scratch into something a ten year old could read.

At last he was done. He didn't bother tossing powder over the ink to make it dry faster—he just held out the paper to her. Almost entreating, like he thought she'd throw the letter to the floor and storm out. 

Perhaps, if she'd been only a little angrier, she would have. She could see, as though through a fog, how easy Corvo's silence would've made this, if only Emily had been furious enough. She could've kept shouting at him until she was hoarse with it. The letter could have fluttered to the floor, unread and useless.

But Emily did not feel very angry anymore. Certainly not enough to be cruel. She took the paper and looked at Corvo's slanted handwriting.

 _My lady—_ (Always so _formal_ , Emily thought.)

_I can see that this matter has upset you greatly, and for that I am sorry. But this time I absolutely cannot let you have your way. It's an unimaginable risk. Even if you returned healthy and hale, I would never forgive myself for putting you into such danger._

_Nothing grieves me more than the scars that these events have left on you, so deep that you believe you will now need to protect me. I'm sorry that particularly my shortcoming has worried you so. I can assure you, I had not even thought of it as a hindrance—and it certainly won't expose me. I will not be conversing with anyone. There are other ways to get the information we need._

_When I taught you to climb, to hide, back at the Tower, it was a game. This is anything but. It has nothing to do with your age or height; were you of age you would still not be coming along._

_It is understandable that you're eager to help. But the best thing you can do for the loyalist conspiracy is remain hidden here at the Hound Pits._

_I promise you that I will be as careful as I can._

The letter was unsigned. It made sense, Emily thought vaguely, since Corvo was right in front of her.

Corvo had sat back down on his bed. Perhaps he hadn't wanted to loom over her. There was something cautious and hopeful in his eyes as he waited to see if his words had convinced her.

A carefully written letter, and Emily should have been content with it. She should've understood, now, that she would not be allowed to come along. He had chosen his words with such care. It was all she could do to honor them, and stay here, swaddled in safety, while he went out and risked his life.

It was so— _unsatisfying_. So different from shouting at her mother and have Jessamine shout back before she mastered herself and switched to cool-headed scolding.

But her mother was dead. And that was not Corvo's fault, and neither was it his fault that he could not talk. 

A cutting, lancing pain shot through her. It was the awful blow of fresh grief. Emily's eyes welled up with tears, and she bit her lip hard to keep them in, ducked her head and hoped that Corvo wouldn't see.

He had used his hands, she thought, with an unreasoning stab of rage at herself. He'd had to use a pen instead of his voice to push back against her fury, but he had done his best. His hands had chosen the words so carefully, just for her, and why was that not _enough?_

Corvo's hands... he had put them palms-down onto his knees. Like a guilty man awaiting a verdict, she thought, and sobbed once, helplessly—waiting to see if his words had been _good_ enough for her.

There was something dark and smudged on his left hand. Emily squinted through her bangs. Two hot trails ran down her cheeks, but she almost didn't feel them. 

Something dark and spidery-shaped, almost like Corvo had written on his hand... But no, it was not writing, it was... 

Emily stepped forward. The missive was almost forgotten in her shaking grip. In a voice that broke wetly, she said, "What's that on your hand?"

Corvo started slightly. He glanced down at his hand, as if he had only just noticed that it lay exposed. Something like dismay flickered across his face. Then Emily was there and reached for him. 

The letter fluttered to the ground. Corvo winced away. With both hands, Emily gripped his. She pulled on the hand he was trying to hide. She could not have moved him had she thrown her whole weight against the push, if he had not let her. 

There was something resigned in his eyes, like he'd always known it would come to this, and had only failed to make a plan on how to deal with it once this moment came. He exhaled a short sigh. But he held out his left hand to her.

Emily knew Corvo's hands. She had been holding them for as long as she could remember, his huge, unchanged hands with their tanned, veined backs and the sword calluses in his palm, his short fingernails and the light little half-moons at his nailbeds. They had dwarfed hers for all her life, even as she had grown in bursts, engulfing her slender hand effortlessly.

She knew his hands, and this, she did not recognize. On the back was a rune.

Or at least, it looked like a rune. Like one of the warning drawings in the dusty books on the Seven Strictures that her tutors at the Tower had made her read. A spidery and elegantly drawn symbol, arranged in a circular fashion. 

The ink seemed to shimmer in the slight. Somehow, Emily knew that even if she were to take rubbing alcohol to Corvo's hand, it would not come off.

His hand... his left hand. Emily blinked slowly. The dampness on her face was just an afterthought, though Corvo looked at her in worried alarm. It chilled her cheeks, but her mind was churning, working.

His left hand. Why did that jar at her memory, shake at something half-forgotten like someone gripping a rug and vigorously shaking out the dust?

" _Corvo bears my mark,_ " the black-eyed man had said. He had looked at her with a kind of amused disapproval, like she was turning out to be quite as blind and deaf as he had thought she was. " _Perhaps you should chance a look at his left._ "

Suddenly, it clicked into place. 

The rune like a shape from her books. The man's fathomless black eyes, the dark wispy fog that rolled off him like a physical aura. His cryptic words. The broken garden she had dreamed of, with its slowly drifting torn-apart cobblestone paths. 

And the bone-things she had found, the one she'd given to Corvo and the other under her pillow...

"The Outsider?" Emily whispered. "That's the man from my dreams?"

Corvo's eyebrows shot up. He pulled his hand out of her grip and clasped her elbow. His gaze was like a physical touch of its own, urgent and searching. She knew what he would ask, what he was asking, so fierce and protective that she could almost hear it as a faraway echo.

"I've dreamed of him," Emily said waveringly. "A man with black eyes. He... that's the _Outsider?_ "

Corvo frowned at her, almost pained. But he seemed to sense that in this, he had to answer her. So at long last, he nodded.

Emily's breath left her in a little gasp, like something had hit her middle. The floor seemed to tilt under her feet.

The Outsider? Corvo had been— the _Outsider_ had been talking to him? 

She had thought... the books had said... that had been the _Outsider_ , in her dreams? The books had described him as a huge leviathan, a serpentish creature...

Corvo's rune had blurred and distorted before her eyes. She saw it only as a dark halo, feathering out at the edges with the hurt, horrified tears that welled up mercilessly in her eyes.

"Is this his?" she whispered. She gestured weakly at his hand.

Corvo's expression hardened, saddened. There was a small, puzzled frown between his eyebrows—he saw she was distressed, but did not quite understand why. He nodded again.

Something was choking her, crammed up her throat, too hard and achy to swallow or cough out. Alarm flickered across Corvo's face again. He scooted forward, but Emily stumbled back and he froze, there on the edge of his bed, halted just by that simple motion from her.

Words were pushing up into her mouth, like mucus after a long, hard bout of crying. She stared at Corvo, at the thing on his hand and the worried frown on his face. The man from her dreams was the _Outsider_ , and, and he'd been—

"You let the Outsider help but not me? He's _rude!_ " Emily shouted, and burst quite abruptly into tears.

The first sob was so loud that it startled her. It was like something coming up from a riverbed, a rusted and warped contraption that hurt as it tore itself free. 

She pressed her hand to her mouth to hide the painful grimace she could feel forming there. Another sob wrenched itself loose from where it'd been tethered for so long and jolted her whole body. Her breath hitched in and in. The floor swayed under her, and she stumbled.

Then Corvo was there on the floor with her. Through her tears, she couldn't even see if he had opened his arms for her, she just stumbled forward. 

His hands caught her and hefted her close. For a moment she felt her chest go tight with panic—he had his left hand on her back, the hand with the rune... But it was _Corvo's_ hand, and she relaxed, too overwhelmed to care anymore about the black-eyed man.

She clung to Corvo with both hands and sobbed until she shook with it. Her tears seeped into his shirt. An anxious, shivery wave rocked through her, and she felt as though her grip couldn't be tight enough, that Corvo would float away if she didn't hold on to him. 

Corvo held her close. He gently smoothed one of his broad palms down her shoulder. She couldn't hear his heartbeat over her own wet, gasping breaths, but she was sure she was not imagining the slight uncertainty in his touch. 

He'd looked so startled. And really, what had Emily been _doing_ , yelling at him and stomping around in his room and, and accusing him of not being able to do his work properly, and now weeping into his shirt. It was no wonder Corvo didn't know what had hit him.

But she was so afraid. The Void help her, but she was so _afraid_. Corvo went out, again and again, to turn the cogs and right the wrongs that had befallen Dunwall, and her mother was gone and there were so many damned _shadows_ everywhere, and if Corvo ever... if ever he did not come back...

She cried for a long time. The wandering sunlight left her little sheltered fort in Corvo's shirt dim and warm. Then at some point, Corvo began to hum. 

Emily sniffled noisily. Then she stilled. She could count on one hand the times she'd ever heard his voice. 

One winter he'd contracted a terrible cough, and a high-ranking captain of the City Watch had replaced him for a few days. When he'd come back, a bit pale but as sure-footed as ever, he'd still been coughing periodically. 

Then he had hummed her to sleep, once, when she'd been so young that she couldn't recall much, just the fabric of his shirt against her face and her mother's tired voice in the background, and the fever that burned high and scorching in her little body.

Emily's throat ached, raw from weeping. Now, though, she gulped and coughed, struggled to force the sobs down. She wanted to listen. 

But something about the melody just pulled them out further. They opened up a slow well of grief. Her tears were quieter, now, hot down her sore cheeks and damp on Corvo's shirt. 

At least she could breathe. Shallow little breaths that shuddered unevenly. They did not hurt like the sobs had. It was like her body was even tireder than her mind, and couldn't summon the energy for the wild and desolate crying from before.

She felt the melody more than heard it. Corvo's voice was like a scratched audiograph; it skipped and gave out. The little song ground rough and broken in his throat. But Emily could feel the vibration of his voice in his chest where she had pressed her cheek.

She did not know how long they sat there. Eventually, Emily became dimly aware that she was curled up in Corvo's lap, cradled in his arms. He held her rather tightly. She sighed, and pressed her cheek against his collarbone, grateful for the firm hold. Finally, she unknotted her cramping fingers from their white-knuckled fists. She knew now that even if she relaxed, Corvo wouldn't let her go.

She sniffed from time to time. Corvo's tunic was frankly disgusting, wet with tears and snot, and still she could not stop. The tears just kept on. They were like a foaming wave that had built up and up and was now breaking against the steady shore.

At some point, it seemed she had fallen into a brief, exhausted slumber. She woke halfway to the feeling of movement. 

Corvo's footsteps echoed in an even rhythm. Though her nose was clogged, Emily recognized the woodsy, slightly moldy scent of the hallway. Her calves felt cold where they dangled over the crook of his arm. 

Drowsily, she curled herself into a smaller ball against his chest, trying to preserve what warmth she could. A breeze stirred her hair. Even through sore, closed eyes, she could see the brilliant gleam of the sun.

Then, Callista's voice, hushed and worried, from far away. Emily felt movement again. Corvo was... he was leaning over, setting her down on something soft and cool.

Emily sniffled again. Her head seemed to be stuffed with wet wool. An ache throbbed and burrowed behind her forehead. She tried to clutch at Corvo's shirt so he wouldn't put her down, but her fingers didn't seem to want to grasp properly.

Her head touched a pillow. The light went very dim. Someone spread her sheets over her, and she felt a gentle tug at her feet as someone carefully pulled off her shoes.

It was Callista's hands that smoothed out the blanket. Emily could smell a hint of Cecelia's laundry soap on her as she leaned over the bed. There were some shuffling noises in the background, then again Callista's voice...

Emily turned on her side. She was so tired, her lids so raw and heavy. It took a monumental effort to open them again. But she managed to squint a little and take in the barest details of the room around her.

She was back in her little tower, in her bed. Callista had closed the shutters to block out the harsh sunlight and help her sleep. 

And Corvo was still there. The desk chair looked oddly small under him. It creaked as he carefully lowered his weight into it. Worry had carved a little line between his eyebrows. He looked tired, a little sore, like Emily's tears had hurt him, too.

But Callista said something to him—it was so hard to hear, Emily thought drowsily, with her head so woolly—and he smiled just a bit. He settled back into the chair.

Emily's eyes burned from all the salt. She was glad to let them drift shut again. A breeze whistled through the shutters, but her bed was cozy and warm, and the intermittent cadence of Callista's voice guided her into sleep.


	7. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Far off across the river, fireworks popped and burst in the sky. The clocktower was periodically lit up in brilliant yellow and orange. Sparks rained down on the city, and sunk into the dark, narrow streets between the manors and tenement buildings.
> 
> They weren't as loud as they'd been in Emily's dream. But this time she was farther away. An icy breeze blew in from the water, carrying with it the scent of mold and salt.

Far off across the river, fireworks popped and burst in the sky. The clocktower was periodically lit up in brilliant yellow and orange. Sparks rained down on the city, and sunk into the dark, narrow streets between the manors and tenement buildings.

They weren't as loud as they'd been in Emily's dream. But this time she was farther away. An icy breeze blew in from the water, carrying with it the scent of mold and salt.

Even with Callista's coat around her shoulders, Emily shivered. She stood at the top of the stairs, near the place where she'd tripped that first time the black-eyed man—the Outsider—had visited her in her dreams.

Across the river, a flare of red soared up. It gleamed like an ascending star, then exploded in a shower of gold.

"Emily!" Callista called from the door. "Come inside, would you?"

She had been doing so well, standing outside in the dark, just beyond the bright patch of light from the tavern door. But Emily couldn't help but flinch a bit at the suddenness of Callista's voice. 

She breathed out, and rolled her eyes as she turned around. Perhaps Callista thought she'd simply jump into the river and swim to the Boyle mansion, since Corvo and Mr. Beechworth had taken the boat. 

High up on the metal walkway, Emily had stood and watched the boat dig foamy furrows into the Wrenhaven. Mr. Beechworth's coattails had flapped behind him in the wind. So far as she could tell, Corvo had not looked back.

Callista gave her a little smile. But Emily didn't miss how she relaxed as soon as she'd ushered Emily back inside and closed the door. Maybe she was worried that the sight of the fireworks would upset her.

Lately, Callista had been looking worried a lot. She tried to hide it, but Emily saw it anyway, the stern line between her eyebrows and the long glances she sometimes shot at Emily when she thought she didn't notice.

She had been generous in her lessons. She'd even played proper hide and seek with her once. In the mornings, she seemed to ask just a bit more insistently whether Emily had slept well.

It was— not entirely bothersome. But it made Emily think she'd done something wrong, and was now on some sort of probation, where she had to keep up a bright smile and stand unflinching amidst shadows, and make not a single other misstep.

Emily sighed to herself. She shrugged off Callista's coat. The heat of the crackling stove flowed over her, warming her chilled cheeks. 

The tablecloth was smooth and silky under her hands. Emily ran her fingers over it, wonderingly. Cecelia must have found it in some old closet. It was a bit wrinkled and smelled of dust. Still, the pristine white was a sight to see. It made their corner of the tavern look almost a bit stately and glamorous.

On the other side of the table, Callista guided her wooden figurine between two teacups. Right where they had propped up one of Emily's drawings, she stopped, and seemed to admire the artwork.

Emily took a sip from her hot chocolate. Her own toy, smaller but no less smoothly whittled, came prancing in, darting between the teacups as well.

"This ball is amazing!" she said. Her figure turned about as though gazing up at the draperies on the walls.

"The ladies Boyle have outdone themselves again," Callista agreed. "You would think that in times like these there would be no time for dancing and merriment."

Emily thought about that for a moment. "But maybe it's in times like these that people need a pick-me-up."

Callista smiled. "True," she allowed. "I do not recall seeing you before." Her figure made a polite little bow towards Emily's. "I am Ms. Curnow. What's your name, little girl?"

Emily thought for a moment. "Cecelia," she said, and bowed back.

Callista quickly smothered a chuckle. She had likely noticed as well how Cecelia had been shooting longing looks at Kaldwin's Bridge all afternoon, and how she'd mentioned sometimes that they ought to have some music and dancing too.

The fire crackled in the stove. From the kitchen came smells of dinner. Probably fish again, Emily thought uncharitably, and too salty as well. But Lydia had made a small pot of hot chocolate, declaring that they had to use up the last of their cream before it went bad. This, at least, tasted delicious, with a little hint of spice.

Their two figures were now strolling slowly down the table. Emily imagined the golden confetti from her dream all around, twirling through the hallways in the currents of air as the guests moved about in their finery.

At a small saucer with grapes, Callista's figure stopped. She plucked a few grapes for both of them. They burst tart and sweet on Emily's tongue—a bit soft, perhaps, but still good.

Callista eyed Emily as she chewed. "Should a young girl like you be out and about by herself?"

Emily tried out a polite tinkling laugh. "Oh, it's quite alright. My...," and she broke off, hesitating, caught wrong-footed in their little game.

 _My mother_ , she'd meant to say, reflexively. Of course she had not forgotten that her mother was gone. But the words still came as such a reflex that it took much conscious thought to dismantle the impulse.

Callista was giving her that cautious look across the table. But Emily just smiled back. "My cousin has taken me along, she's somewhere back there." Her wooden toy turned about in her coaxing fingers, darting searching glances through the crowd. "Oh, there she is."

For just a moment, Callista hesitated. Something soft and yielding gleamed in her eyes. No, Emily thought, and held her gaze with determination. They were _playing._ There was no need for soft words of comfort. They were just playing, and Emily was happy that her tutor was playing with her, and there was nothing more to it.

Callista glanced away. She nodded at Emily's imaginary cousin towards the end of the table. "That's quite a beautiful dress your cousin is wearing," she said. "A bit old-fashioned, perhaps."

Emily exhaled a quiet sigh of relief. She nodded, eager to move past the brief stumble and get back into their game. "We're from Potterstead," she said. "The fashions of the capital are so much more progressive and sophisticated." 

Callista was taking a long gulp of her hot chocolate. She made a noncommittal humming noise. 

And suddenly, the fleeting pain of the thought of her mother was almost forgotten. Emily grinned, and she imagined that this might be what Mr. Joplin must have felt like, building his inventions.

She had just come across the perfect moment for a segue. She bounced a little in her seat, then cleared her throat and assumed a serious expression. Her excitement had to be disguised. She was scouting for Corvo. She couldn't forget her role.

"Have you seen our hostesses?" she asked, quite casually. "Such well-tailored trousers they're wearing, I'm sure this fashion will spread all across Gristol soon."

Their figurines meandered between the two teacups again. The table didn't exactly make for a good sprawling mansion, but it wasn't to be helped—they had to make do. Emily just pretended that the teacups were now a door to another large room with antique couches and expensive paintings on the walls.

"Oh, yes," Callista said agreeably. Then she wrinkled her nose. "But I'm sure the party hosts of Potterstead have more sense than engage their guests in juvenile guessing games."

Emily smiled to herself: Callista had noticed her line of inquiry and was following quite docilely. She drained her hot chocolate in a big gulp. It was a shame to drink the last of it so fast, but she needed her wits about her for the next part.

"I think it's quite charming," she offered. Her voice squeaked a bit. Emily breathed out. _Calm_ , she reminded herself, calm and casual, as if she were just passing time at the ball.

If Callista had heard her excitement, she let it slide. "Well, it should be to you," she said. "You are young. But I think that Dunwall has seen entirely too much of the Boyles' various escapades."

That threw Emily off, rather like she had missed a step in a dance. It wasn't what she'd expected Callista to say. She had thought they might talk more about the Boyles' costumes, and then Emily would draw her companion's attention to the colors, and who of the Boyle sisters might have worn which.

"Escapades?" Emily said curiously. 

She didn't think she'd heard anything about that. She did know that the ladies Boyle were quite... 'eccentric', her mother had told her once, after an interesting moment where Jessamine had struggled visibly to unearth a word fit for Emily's young ears.

Callista, it turned out, seemed to have much the same thoughts. She coughed. "Well— Cecelia, that is a matter best not discussed with young girls."

"Oh, alright," Emily said, with a small shrug.

The figures strolled past Emily's painting again. It was her drawing of the Tower, with a rainbow glistening in the sky above—in a faraway future, when the plague would be nothing but distant memory. 

It was strange, she mused, what adults deemed appropriate for young girls and what they kept away from her.

Corvo went out at night to... well, perhaps not to _kill_ every time. But Emily was sure that some blood had flowed. She doubted that the people who had murdered her mother would've just changed their minds and apologized, had Corvo asked them to.

And yet, Mr. Beechworth had looked so startled when Emily had spoken of the Golden Cat. Corvo hid away his weapons, as though he worried that she'd mistake them for toys and accidentally shoot someone with his crossbow. And Callista steered her away from the Boyles' indiscretions.

Outside, the sky lit up with periodic bursts of light. They came muted through the tavern's dusty windows. From here, Emily saw them only as showers of brightness, mixed orange and gold.

She tried not to look out of the window too much, because the fireworks made her think of her mother's parties and how much she had liked those. Ball nights and their glittering, mesmerizing splendor, the decorations all through the palace and her mother in her prettiest clothes, looking— well, still like her mother, but somehow more regal than usual.

Emily had used to devise elaborate plans to escape her governess. She'd wanted to mingle with the crowd and pretend she was a grown-up lady. Then she'd sidled up to decorated officers to wrestle a story or two about seafaring from them.

And oh, the _fireworks_ that lit up the Tower those nights. Colorful ones, and little pouches of powder that you could toss down an alley and they exploded into harmless sparks. Candles whose flames changed color as the wick burned down.

And in the end, there'd been the fussing of her governess, when she'd finally caught up with her escaped charge, huffing and puffing. Plump, nimble hands straightening Emily's fine clothes, and finally guiding her upstairs into the quiet parlor. There, Emily had yawned and dozed on the plush couch until her mother had swung by to tuck her into bed.

Earlier, when Emily had stood in the front yard, she'd seen that the light did not reach as far as Dunwall Tower. Her home remained cast in darkness, save for the twinkling lights of guardsmen or servants that were still up.

When she was Empress, she resolved, there would be balls aplenty. One at her coronation, certainly, and another when she'd chosen her advisers. One for the servants who had toiled under the Lord Regent and who must have been missing Jessamine sorely. A whole week of dancing to celebrate the end of the plague, once Sokolov had had his next genius idea.

One for her birthday, one for Corvo's birthday, one for Callista's... Emily smiled to herself. The Tower would be awash with colorful light. There would be buffet tables and confetti. She would hire the best musicians of Gristol to play the sweetest, jauntiest dancing tunes, and if some stuck-up lady thought herself too high and mighty to dance, well, Emily would just have her escorted out.

Emily turned her small toy towards Callista's. "Is there a prize then?"

Callista blinked at her. Just as Emily had been, she'd seemed lost in her own thoughts. "Prize?" she repeated.

"For the guessing game," Emily said. "Is there a reward for getting it right?"

To her surprise, Callista flushed slightly. Emily frowned—how was that an adult thing? But her tutor rallied with a determined smile. "I think so, yes," she said. "At the very least, a dance with their Lady Boyle of choice."

Emily hummed thoughtfully. She turned her own figure about. Mr. Joplin had carved it to wear a skirt, one that flared outwards and ended just above the tiny feet. Surely it would've been fluttering, had it been made of real fabric—brushing whisper-soft against her ankles and flowing with her movements.

"I think I'd best dance with the one in white, then," Emily said. She took care to speak slowly—it wouldn't do to appear overexcited, as she had earlier. "She seems shortest."

"You're going to play?" Callista smiled. "Isn't that a bit unfair on you, being from Potterstead? You've never seen the ladies without these masks."

"Well, you could give me a few pointers."

For a moment she held her breath. But her tutor didn't seem to think that anything was amiss with Emily's quick answer.

Callista's figurine turned as it looked around thoughtfully, seeking out the ladies Boyle in the crowd. "I heard that Waverly is the one in white. It's a private joke. She would never wear white to any other party, it fades out her complexion something dreadful."

Emily suppressed her triumphant smile. Of course, Callista was playing along—she'd probably seen where Emily wished to go, and followed her lead. But Emily still thought that she had done so well. She hadn't let herself get distracted by the nobles and their chatter, she had played her role and now she reaped the rewards.

She waited a moment before she spoke. She could not give away her victory. She could boast later when they had finished their game. "Well," Emily said, "if I'm going to dance with her, I shall have to practice!"

And she turned her figurine towards Callista's, with an expectant smile and a little bow.

Callista grinned suddenly. Her eyes lit up, and she looked eager and young, courteously bowing back as her wooden toy accepted Emily's offer of a dance.

She looked at Emily, then over her shoulder at the piano. In a whisper that was clearly not part of their game, she asked, "Music?"

Emily hadn't thought of that. She nodded. Callista slid out of her bench and went over to the piano.

She'd thought they would just hum, or imagine the music. But this was so much better. Emily watched as Callista rifled through the sheet music. She tried to stretch up in her seat, but she still couldn't see which books Callista was looking at.

The wooden lid opened with a small clang. The keys were mildly discolored in the lamp light. Emily would've played too, but actually she was quite content here at the table, where she could twirl the little toys around.

The first chord nearly made her laugh. It was her dance. Callista was playing her dance, the one Emily had been toiling over for so long. The chord rang out mildly discordant, as the out-of-tune strings gave slightly under the hammers' falls.

She clinked the figurines together at the hips. The dance would begin with sedate and elegant steps, she thought, until the capricious downward-fluttering melody broke the illusion of a stately waltz.

She let the toys circle each other. Then they strode across regally the tablecloth. She imagined they were dodging other pairs of dancing nobles, though Emily doubted that there was any dancing going on at the real Boyle manor. A lot of adults seemed to think that dancing was for commoners, or for the Fugue Feast, and that elegant socialites did not prance about to lively music in an airy ballroom.

Well, this was her party, and they would dance if Emily wanted them to. Callista's toy turned gracefully around itself, spinning for a moment. Emily imagined her trousers fluttering with the motion, and giggled a bit—she didn't particularly like skirts either, but she couldn't deny they were much better for dancing.

Callista was no pianist. There were a few starts and stops in the melody. But under Callista's experienced hands, the dance flowed and skipped like a boisterous current of water across a rocky riverbed. It sounded much smoother than when Emily played it, with the added depth of the chords that her small hands could not yet reach.

A set of fireworks burst with a muted pop. Callista leaned a bit to the side as her wrists crossed, and there was only the slightest stumble as her left hand followed the right.

Emily cast a half-hearted glare at Callista's back. She couldn't help but pout a little. One day, she thought, one day she would play like that too.

But she doubted that Callista could've made the figures twirl around on the tablecloth so gracefully. Their tiny feet left little furrows in the pristine white as Emily dragged them a little ways, slower as the dance went into its final intricate spin.

Corvo was out there, and he didn't have Emily to help him. Emily bit her lip. She smoothed her fingertip over the head of Callista's figure. But Corvo had told her he'd be careful. And perhaps he was even enjoying himself a little, listening to the music and perhaps drinking a glass or two of cider.

She couldn't think about what would happen if he did not come back. He would come back. He had promised. He'd be doubly careful, he had written to her, on a sheet of paper that Emily had stubbornly held out to him just before he'd left. 

Now, Corvo was at the ball, ink stains on his fingers. And maybe, if something did go wrong, the strange symbol that the black-eyed man had put on the back of his hand could help him.

The fireworks lit the night sky even through the windows. If she didn't look too closely, Emily could pretend they were being lit at the Tower, with clusters of laughing ladies looking on as the men tossed small firecrackers into the fragrant grass and got soot on their hands. 

Corvo would be back soon, and maybe Emily could convince him to do a proper turn around the tavern with her, to the tunes of the piano. Callista played so sweetly, almost as though there were a crowd listening with bated breath. For now, this dance was hers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is it, folks! I find myself quite reluctant to end this story because I've had such a blast writing it, but well, I felt that this was a good moment to end it. (One last time, the song Callista plays is [Anitra's Dance](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7GDt44sgag) by Edvard Grieg. For now I am done throwing this song at y'all.)
> 
> Thank you so, so much to everyone who read this story or even kudos'd or commented. Every single AO3 notification made me happier than I can say. And the Tumblr notifications too, of course! ([Here](http://derryday.tumblr.com/) is my Tumblr in case you want it.) This fandom has been so warm and welcoming and I'm just really happy I picked up this game!
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this last chapter. Thank you for reading! ♥


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